GoKawiil
Tech News
MIT Technology Review published two features: one on how AI agents that can manage email, shopping, and banking are driving a shift toward an 'agentic web,' and another examining global efforts to reduce the more than 1 million annual traffic deaths worldwide through measures like redesigned intersections, lower speed limits, and expanded public transit.
Hoboken, New Jersey has recorded no traffic deaths since 2017, a result credited to expanded public transit investment, wider curbs for walkability, and camera data used to redesign crash-prone intersections. Officials note that proving an intersection's danger before acting on it remains a persistent obstacle, even in a success story. A similarly sharp improvement occurred in Edmonton, Alberta, which cut traffic fatalities by 63% and serious injuries by 40% between 2015 and 2020 through speed limit changes and crosswalk signal upgrades.
California still requires drivers to carry only $15,000 per person and $30,000 per crash in liability insurance, a threshold set in 1967 and never updated for inflation. By contrast, actuarial estimates now put the cost of a fatal traffic death at roughly $1.6 million, meaning the mandated coverage covers a small fraction of the real financial harm a driver can cause. Massachusetts, which pioneered mandatory insurance in 1927 with a $5,000 minimum (about $96,000 today), only recently raised its own outdated cap to $25,000.