In order to adapt to the issues of climate change and public health, urban policies are trying to encourage soft mobility, but the share of the car remains significant. Beyond known constraints, we study here the impact of perception biases on individual choices. We designed a multi-criteria decision model, integrating the influence of habits and biases. We then conducted an online survey, which received 650 responses. We used these to calculate realistic mobility perception values, in order to initialise the environment and the population of a modal choice simulator, implemented in Netlogo. This allows us to visualize the adaptation of the modal distribution in reaction to the evolution of urban planning, depending on whether or not we activate biases and habits in individual reasoning. This is an extended and translated version of a demo paper published in French at JFSMA-JFMS 2024 "Un simulateur multi-agent de choix modal subjectif"

To adapt cities to the issues of climate change and public health, urban policies are trying to encourage soft mobility [14] in order to reduce traffic and pollution, via financial incentives or new infrastructure. However, mobility evolves very slowly, and the share of the car remains significant (74% in France [9]), despite increased public awareness of global warming, and increased concern for ecology. The pandemic offered an opportunity to explore the impact of reduced car mobility and new urban planning policies, for instance with temporary cycle paths [19]. But these public policies normally take longer to implement and are not always well accepted by the car-loving population; many of these temporary cycle paths were gradually returned to cars after the end of the lockdowns [6]. Many explaining factors of this inertia of mobility and reluctance to shift from the car are already known, both contextual, such as a lack of alternatives (limited public transportation options), individual constraints (transporting children or tools), or higher costs of newer or electric vehicles...); and psychological, such as the difficulty to change habits [8, 17], individualism [12], or influence of cognitive biases [15, 13].

Nothing beats the experience of powering down the highway in your car with the speakers blaring out your favourite tunes. But often the music doesn't match up to the moments of the drive – whether it's the chorus kicking in when you hit the accelerator or steady beats breaking up the monotony of the motorway. Now, a solution has come from an unlikely source – will.i.am, the entrepreneur and musician best known as the founder of the Black Eyed Peas. He's partnered with German car maker Mercedes Benz on futuristic in-car software called Sound Drive that'turns your car into a musical instrument'. When the driver accelerates, brakes or turns, the software reacts to create new sounds or remix existing tunes, making the driver'the conductor' and the car'the orchestra'.

A Scottish man felt like he was being'kidnapped' when his electric vehicle (EV) appeared to develop a mind of its own at the weekend. Brian Morrison, 53, was heading home from work when his £30,000 MG ZS suffered a'catastrophic malfunction' on the A803 towards Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow. He was left terrified when the brake pedals stopped working and the car – which is designed and built in China – began driving itself at 30mph. Because he has mobility issues, Mr Morrison was unable to jump out of the car, which only came to a stop after it was deliberately driven into a police van. Thankfully no-one was hurt - but the incident has raised questions of whether the same issue could affect other EV users.

A woman successfully used ChatGPT to encourage her landlord to fix a washer and dryer that had been out of order for over two years. The washing machine of a New York City apartment was fixed soon after 28-year-old Svetlana sent a legally charged chatbot letter to her landlord. Svetlana, who did not wish to reveal her last name, claimed the bot was'super-smart' after quoting specific sections of New York rent law to back its case. She said: 'That's the beauty of ChatGPT; the ability to collaborate, bounce ideas, put thoughts into a cohesive piece of writing. The New York resident first had qualms with her landlord after receiving a rent increase notice of 0.4 per cent, from $1,389 to $1,395 (£1116 to £1121).

Effective management of public shared spaces such as car parking space, is one challenging transformational aspect for many cities, especially in the developing World. By leveraging sensing technologies, cloud computing, and Artificial Intelligence, Cities are increasingly being managed smartly. Smart Cities not only bring convenience to City dwellers, but also improve their quality of life as advocated for by United Nations in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal on Sustainable Cities and Communities. Through integration of Internet of Things and Cloud Computing, this paper presents a successful proof-of-concept implementation of a framework for managing public car parking spaces. Reservation of parking slots is done through a cloud-hosted application, while access to and out of the parking slot is enabled through Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology which in real-time, accordingly triggers update of the parking slot availability in the cloud-hosted database. This framework could bring considerable convenience to City dwellers since motorists only have to drive to a parking space when sure of a vacant parking slot, an important stride towards realization of sustainable smart cities and communities.

A van with technology that can automatically detect drivers holding a mobile phone at the wheel or not wearing a seatbelt is being trialled in the UK for the first time. National Highways are working with Warwickshire police to try out the "sensor test vehicle" on motorways and major A roads, and drivers who are caught may be prosecuted. The initial three-month trial will determine how the technology can be further deployed in future. Insp Jem Mountford, of Warwickshire police, said: "We are really excited to see the impact that this new technology has on the behaviour of drivers in Warwickshire. "During the trial the most serious breaches may be prosecuted, with others receiving warning letters, giving us the opportunity to explain how they have been caught and asking them to change their behaviour.

The Delhi Traffic Police signed a Memorandum of Understanding for an integrated traffic management system with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), which has further assigned the task to a consultant firm. The new system that works on machine learning and artificial intelligence will also play a vital role in facilitating a quick passage to emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire tenders.

A California motorist has become the first person to be charged over a fatal crash involving Tesla's Autopilot system. Kevin George Aziz Riad, 27, faces two counts of vehicular manslaughter after being behind the wheel of a Tesla when it ran a red light, crashing into another car and killing two people. It is the first time a motorist has been charged with a felony for an incident involving the electric car maker's partially automated driving system, according to the Associated Press. Los Angeles County prosecutors filed the charges in October, but details of the case have only just emerged. Mr Riad, who works as a limousine service driver, is out on bail while the case is pending.

A new spy-in-the-sky camera which identified 15,000 cases of drivers using mobile phones could also catch motorists eating, drinking, or not wearing a seatbelt, its makers say. Smart cameras linked to a new, automated system using artificial intelligence (AI) are being trialled on an undisclosed motorway - ahead of a blanket ban on holding a mobile device while driving which comes into force in early 2022. The cameras instantly analyse high-definition photos taken through the windscreen of passing cars, and Jenoptik, the enforcement technology firm testing the cameras in the UK, believes they will be crucial in providing evidence to prosecute offenders. The pilot scheme has been running since spring and it is hoped a wider rollout across the country will be possible next year. But Acusensus, the Australian firm who designed the cameras, admits that they can be used to catch motorists doing anything from eating, drinking, smoking, adjusting the radio or using navigation devices in a holder.