Understanding urban mobility patterns and analyzing how people move around cities helps improve the overall quality of life and supports the development of more livable, efficient, and sustainable urban areas. A challenging aspect of this work is the collection of mobility data by means of user tracking or travel surveys, given the associated privacy concerns, noncompliance, and high cost. This work proposes an innovative AI-based approach for synthesizing travel surveys by prompting large language models (LLMs), aiming to leverage their vast amount of relevant background knowledge and text generation capabilities. Our study evaluates the effectiveness of this approach across various U.S. metropolitan areas by comparing the results against existing survey data at different granularity levels. These levels include (i) pattern level, which compares aggregated metrics like the average number of locations traveled and travel time, (ii) trip level, which focuses on comparing trips as whole units using transition probabilities, and (iii) activity chain level, which examines the sequence of locations visited by individuals. Our work covers several proprietary and open-source LLMs, revealing that open-source base models like Llama-2, when fine-tuned on even a limited amount of actual data, can generate synthetic data that closely mimics the actual travel survey data, and as such provides an argument for using such data in mobility studies.

As if Elon Musk did not have enough on his plate with Twitter, Tesla is now under fire in a full-page advertisement in the New York Times that warns its'Full Self-Driving presents a life-threatening danger to child pedestrians.' The ad, which cost about $150,000, is from software maker The Dawn Project and claims to highlight safety testing conducted by the firm in October. A video of the experiment suggests the system does not register or stop for small mannequins crossing a road, according to the group. The testing involved a man driving in a Tesla on a back road and running over child-size mannequins in his path. Using the Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta 10.69.2.2, which is the latest version of the system, the vehicle collided with a 29-inch mannequin at speeds as low as 15 miles per hour and it ran over a four-foot-tall one at 20 miles per hour.

January 22, 2018 in Culver City: A Tesla Model S hit the back of a fire truck parked at an accident in Culver City around 8:30 am on Interstate 405 using the cars Autopilot system. The Tesla, which was going 65mph, suffered'significant damage' and the firetruck was taken out of service for body work. May 30, 2018 in Laguna Beach: Authorities said a Tesla sedan in Autopilot mode crashed into a parked police cruiser in Laguna Beach. Laguna Beach Police Sgt. Jim Cota says the officer was not in the cruiser during the crash. He said the Tesla driver suffered minor injuries.

A'deeply disturbing' video claims to show a Tesla in full self-driving mode running over a child-size mannequin during a test by a safety campaign group. The Dawn Project said the vehicle failed to detect the stationary dummy's presence in the road and hit it over and over again at an average speed of 25mph. It claims that the experiment was carried out under'controlled conditions' on a test track in California. Tesla, which was founded by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has been approached for a comment by MailOnline but is yet to respond to the video. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) confirmed that it'currently has an open and active investigation of Tesla's Autopilot active driver assistance system'.

A Tesla Model 3 car in'Full Self-Driving' mode has been captured colliding with a bike lane barrier post, in a potential setback for Elon Musk's firm. The footage was captured during a drive in downtown San Jose, California, by a YouTuber who goes by the name AI Addict, and provides the first recorded evidence that the feature has been directly responsible for an accident. It shows the latest version of Tesla's self-driving software, Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta version 10.10, veering the Model 3 into the bollard separating a bike lane. Even though the driver is hitting the brakes and furiously spins the steering wheel away from the obstacle, the AI-powered FSD system hits the bollard with a big thud. Worryingly, at other points in the video the Model 3 appears to run a red light and attempts to go down a railroad track and later a tram lane.

A Tesla Model 3 driving on'autopilot' smacked into a Florida Highway Patrol cruiser on Saturday morning, narrowly missing the driver of the cruiser who had stopped in order to help a disabled vehicle. The incident is the 12th such smash involving a Tesla on autopilot mode and an emergency vehicle. All the cars which have been struck had their lights flashing, or had deployed an emergency flare, illuminated warning sign or cones, raising questions about whether they may have confused the Tesla's sensors. Saturday's smash happened after when the 28-year-old trooper, who has not been named, stopped shortly after 5 am on August 28 on I-4 near downtown Orlando while responding to a broken down car. He put his emergency lights and was walking over to a disabled vehicle when the Tesla hit the cruiser's left side, according to a copy of the police report seen by DailyMail.com.