No More Bus Races! Shanghai to Install GPS to Prevent Speeding

There are some people out there who have to show their special affinity for speed regardless if they're driving a race car, a street-legal vehicle, a tractor or a... bus... And it appears that those racer-wannabes are pretty easy to find in China, especially if you're searching in the public transportation system. Many bus drivers in Shanghai are breaking the speed limit, so the local authorities decided to respond in a very simple way.

From now on, most of the buses driven on Shanghai's streets will carry a GPS specifically configured to prevent speeding. The system has been tested on two city bus lines, Gasgoo.com writes, and will be soon expanded to a total of 570 vehicles operating on 24 lines.

This means that every single bus that travels on a route from the suburban areas of the city to the central zones will come with GPS units installed by the Shanghai Bashi Industrial Group which operates the bus transportation system in the town.

And the Shanghai authorities' intentions do not stop here. More changes will be implemented in the future, with a data-collection programme currently in development and supposed to be installed on the city's buses as well.

According to the aforementioned source, the application is designed to collect data related to the vehicle, but also to specific routes, thus helping city authorities to optimize public transportation. More than 15,000 vehicles will be tracked as soon as the new programme reaches the final development stage.