Search results

Contemporary society is characterized by extreme acceleration (Rosa, 2010). Time has become a scarce resource and individuals are forced to adhere to the demands of speediness. This condition is connected to the increased performance now required in many areas of daily life, an increase so profound that some authors refer to ours as a “doping society.”

This chapter argues that the practice of quantification exponentially increases the “managerializing” of the user. In this sense, the quantified-self (QS) can be thought of as something that helps people to organize their activities in the manner of the market. Individuals thus become self-entrepreneurs who, in keeping with the standard aims of neoliberalism, make use of their collected data in a fashion analogous to the way results are determined in a corporation’s Research & Development department. The self becomes an assortment of analyses by which measures of behaviors and habits are made, all in the name of producing an “objective report” on the user’s characteristics. The ultimate aim of all this is to improve certain parts of life so as to increase and optimize our productivity.

We use a combination of continuum and car-following models to explore the potential impact of speed-controls on (i) decreasing travel times at times of congested flow; and (ii) increasing the safety of motorway flow approaching the site of an accident.

This chapter provides a taxonomy of key rolling stock types and covers the key engineering principles. This chapter concentrates on the aspects of the rolling stock that make it sustainable in terms of passenger transportation; these aspects are primarily safety and crashworthiness. These are specific items that contribute to make the rolling stock and hence rail system more sustainable; passengers need to be confident that they are travelling in safe rolling stock and the vehicle consist, manufacturing technique or materials used should not compromise the crashworthiness aspects. For this reason, all aspects of this chapter reference vehicle safety and crashworthiness.

This chapter describes the approach to sustainable rail passenger rolling stock in terms of interior passive safety requirements within the European market. It is intended to give the background and logistical approach for the future introduction of a standard as an aid for the design and validation of the interiors of passenger rail vehicles. Also discussed is the acceptance of the proposed European-based standard into the regulatory system of the technical specifications for interoperability. Methodologies for design assessment and validation will be discussed. This chapter is intended to encourage an acceptance of the standard for interior passive safety as a realistic and cost-effective method of improving rail vehicle safety in terms of the passenger interfaces with the rail stock interior.