At a Glance

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Thursday March 22, 2018

Han Ximinximhan@126.com

COMPANIES involved in driv-erless vehicle testing must hand in applications for approval and conduct tests at designated areas and time periods, according to a draft rule on the testing of smart cars on roads.

According to the draft rule, which has been compiled by Shenzhen’s transport commis-sion, the police and the trade and information commission, a joint conference will be insti-tuted to review the applications and give clear requirements on the number of vehicles and the driverless areas and time periods designated for the test. Each round of tests should last no longer than three months, and the number of vehicles

deployed for each round should be no more than fi ve.

Police will give temporary plates with serial numbers for each vehicle, which must not be swapped among vehicles.

During the driverless tests, the standby drivers should be on alert to handle emergencies, and the applicants need to purchase traffi c accident insurance with a premium of at least 5 million yuan (US$789,652) or provide a letter of guarantee of 5 million yuan signed by a bank promis-ing to compensate for damages in accidents involving its driver-less vehicles.

Four driverless buses with drivers sitting behind the steer-ing wheel started a trial opera-tion in Futian Bonded Zone in December.

The buses with the intelli-

gent bus system Alphaba have a designed speed of 10 to 30 kph, can be fully charged in 40 minutes and cover 150 km on a single charge.

The driverless buses are expected to signifi cantly lower emissions and solve traffi c problems with their advanced data sharing abilities, as well as reduce labor costs and relieve drivers’ workload.

Safety once again has become a top concern, and debate about whether autonomous vehicles are being put into use prema-turely was revived after a fatal accident involving an Uber driv-erless car in Tempe, Arizona, the United States, on Sunday.

A 49-year-old woman was killed in Tempe by an Uber car operating in autono-mous mode with a human

monitor behind the wheel.The death comes a year after

Uber took its self-driving cars off the road following an acci-dent that left a Volvo SUV on its side in Arizona. The program was later reinstated.

Toyota announced Tuesday it has suspended U.S. tests of driverless cars on public roads following Uber’s fatal accident in Arizona.

Toyota said it was concerned about the “emotional effect” the incident might have on its test drivers.

Companies, including Ford, General Motors, Tesla and Waymo, are investing heavily on research to develop self-driving cars, which are often character-ized as the future of the industry and hailed as a way to reduce traffi c accidents.

A FOREIGNER was charged 850 yuan (US$134) by an unli-censed taxi driver who took him from the Shekou Port to Xili in Nanshan District, as the normal taxi fare between the two places is only about 50 to 60 yuan, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.

According to the tip-off pro-vided by a woman surnamed Lei, her client took a ferry from Hong Kong to the Shekou Port on Monday afternoon. A man came up to her client after he arrived at the port. Her client mistook the man for a chauffeur, so he took the car and his luggage was put into the trunk.

After getting into the vehicle, the foreigner saw another middle-aged man in the car. At fi rst, the two men were very friendly, but the foreigner became suspicious when they said they didn’t know the telephone number of the company’s staffers.

The foreigner asked them to drive him to the company, but the two men refused and instead asked for his hotel’s address. On the way to the hotel, the foreigner received a call from Lei, who confi rmed that he had taken the wrong car.

Before they got to the hotel, the driver took out two invoices and asked the foreigner to pay the fare, which totaled 850 yuan, in cash.

Considering the two men had an ulterior motive, the client insisted that he wasn’t carrying that much cash. However, the driver took him to a bank near the hotel and demanded that he withdraw the money.

At last, the client agreed to pay the fare for his own safety and also because he wanted to retrieve his luggage. As he was carrying Japanese yen, the two men charged him 14,000 yen (US$132).

Lei called police at Taoyuan Police Station, in the hopes of retrieving the fare for her client. However, as the case had not reached the standard fi ling, police could only assist the client in locating the unlicensed taxi.

The vehicle and driver have been located by police. The law enforcement authority will pay close attention to the vehicle and see whether it engages in any illegal operations, said the transport commission.

In a similar development, an Indian businessman also claimed to have been ripped off by an unli-censed taxi earlier this year.

Vinit Nair came to Shenzhen on a four-day business trip in mid-January and arrived at the Shekou Port by ferry from the Hong Kong airport. He said he was charged 1,000 yuan by a cabbie for a 30-km trip to a hotel in Bao’an District. (Zhang Yu)

New academicianPROFESSOR Cai Xiaoqiang with the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) was recently selected as an academician of the Interna-tional Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences (IASCS) for his contribu-tions in systems and control sciences.

The Vienna-based IASCS now has 58 academicians across the world.Pet smugglingA TOTAL of 22 living ani-mals, including 20 frogs, a lizard and an insect, were neatly packed in plastic meal boxes, which were stuffed in the backpack of a Hong Kong woman who tried to smuggle them into Shenzhen.

The woman claimed she was carrying the pets to earn a commission from parallel traders after she was caught by offi cers with the Luohu Exit and Entry Quarantine and Inspection Bureau recently.

A preliminary check showed the frogs were horned and leaf frogs, which are mainly native to Peninsular Malaysia. The lizard was a green anole, the only anole lizard native to North America.Driver caughtA DRIVER allegedly involved in a hit-and-run accident March 20 was caught four hours after the fatal acci-dent.

The driver, surnamed Liu, hit a pedestrian walking in the same direction on a motorist lane of National Highway No. 107 near the Fuyong Bus Ter-minal in Bao’an District.

Liu escaped from the acci-dent and police caught him after monitoring the cameras along his route.

Liu admitted he had drunk a liter of beer during the night of March 19.

The case is still under inves-tigation.

STATISTICS released by the Chinese Medical Doctor Asso-ciation showed that the post-90s — those born in the 1990s — in Shenzhen go to sleep later than their counterparts in any other city in China, the Shenzhen Eve-ning News reported yesterday, which was World Sleep Day.

A survey report recently released by the association’s sleep medicine specialist com-mittee showed that the post-90s in Shenzhen go to sleep later than their peers in any other city in China, while the post-90s in Shanghai go to sleep the earliest.

The report also showed that the average sleep index of the post-90s in China is 66.26, meaning that their sleep qual-ity is generally unsatisfactory. About 29.6 percent of post-90s get “bitter sleep” and 33.3 per-cent get “fretful sleep,” while 12.2 percent suffer from insomnia.

Zhou Yunfei, chief physician of the Shenzhen Kangning Hospi-tal’s sleep disorder department,

said that one-third of people in Shenzhen suffer from sleep dis-orders due to the fast-paced and stressful life in the city.

According to Zhou, the prevalence of sleep disorders in Shenzhen is higher than many other cities in China, and women are more likely to suffer from sleep disorders than men.

Zhou said 70 percent of sleep disorders are caused by anxiety and depression. Zhou said a patient from Dongguan once told him that he hadn’t had any sleep for over 10 years. However, sleep monitoring data showed that the patient did fall asleep at night, but he woke up many times due to anxiety, which made him feel like he hadn’t slept at all.

Zhang Li, a doctor at Shenzhen No. 2 People’s Hospital, said resi-dents should develop a healthy and regular lifestyle and improve their sleeping quality by chang-ing their sleeping environment and their eating habits.

“There are many people

working in the IT industry in Shenzhen. These people have a higher risk of getting sleep disor-ders and they should relax more mentally,” Zhang said.

Liu Dabo, a pediatrician at the Southern Medical Univer-sity Shenzhen Hospital, said children with sleep disorders should get timely treatment. He said the disorders will have a negative infl uence on the children’s physical, intellectual and hearing development and may even lead to cardiovascular diseases and sudden death.

Liu said parents can take their children to the hospital for sleep tests to fi nd the cause of their sleep disorders and seek treat-ment accordingly.

Several hospitals, includ-ing Shenzhen No. 2 People’s Hospital, Southern Medical University Shenzhen Hospital and Shenzhen Kangning Hos-pital, held free diagnosis events yesterday for patients with sleep disorders. (Zhang Yang)

City to regulate driverless vehicle testing Foreigner ripped off by unlicensed cabbie

Post-90s in SZ go to bed the latest in China

Government employees clear garbage from the Maozhou River in Guangming New Area on Tuesday. An action was launched in Gongming Subdistrict to clear garbage from the river and sewage pipelines in the area. It was part of an effort to restore the water quality of the city’s longest and one of the most polluted rivers. Chen Ximing

Action initiated to clear rubbish from river