By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

Drive Time notes from near and far:

Highway forum

State lawmakers are hosting a community forum tomorrow night on what is likely to be the biggest highway project of the year.

The forum will discuss plans for the H-1 Freeway project in 'Aiea and Pearl City. Work on the $52 million project to widen the Waimalu Viaduct from the Pearl City off-ramp to Kaonohi Street is scheduled to begin in January and take 18 months to complete.

Transportation Director Rod Haraga will give an update on plans for the work at the forum, which is set for 7 to 8:30 tomorrow night at Pearl Ridge Elementary School cafeteria.

Seat belt safety

The government should scrap regulations that limit how long seat belt warning systems can chime to warn motorists to buckle up, according to a report from the National Academy of Sciences released last week.

The report said there is no scientific basis for the current regulation, which requires warning sounds to chime for no longer than eight seconds.

The most effective seat belt systems prevent drivers from starting the car or turning on the radio without buckling up, the report said. But drivers reacted so negatively to those systems that the report suggested they be used only for the highest-risk drivers, such as convicted drunken drivers and teenagers.

The report praised a seat belt reminder system in new Ford Motor Co. vehicles that chimes for six seconds every 30 seconds for up to five minutes. DaimlerChrysler AG said 60 percent of its 2004 vehicles will include a belt alert system that chimes periodically for 90 seconds.

Driving nice

Making an obscene gesture to a fellow motorist may be rude, but it's not necessarily a crime, an appeals court in Texas has ruled.

Robert Lee Coggin, 34, was convicted under an obscure state law that says it's a crime — disorderly conduct — to make an offensive gesture in a public place if it "tends to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

In its ruling issued last week, the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin said that Coggin's gesture was crude, but evidence did not establish it could cause an immediate breach of the peace. It ordered that he be acquitted.

Stay in the lane

A research team from Japan's Keio University has developed an anti-collision system for cars that uses a camera to correctly position the vehicle within its lane.

The hood-mounted camera captures the images of the white lines on the road and sets the steering to keep the car inside the lane.

Similar systems have been developed based on magnets in the road, but the new system would be much cheaper to develop, officials said.

Those cameras

Traffic cameras, like those Hawai'i experimented with in recent years, may not reduce auto fatalities as much as some people suggest, according to a new report in Britain, where the cameras have long been in use.

The report suggests that the cameras work best at specific high-danger locations, but do not contribute to an overall drop in accidents when applied broadly.

Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.