An increasingly popular solution is the inclusion of a solar panel to keep that battery topped up, enabling you to install and potentially never touch the camera again. Both Wyze and TP-Link just revealed interesting solar-powered cameras this week. Let’s talk about Wyze first.

The Wyze Solar Cam Pan ($80) is a 2K outdoor security camera that can pan 360 degrees and tilt 70 degrees. It is IP65-rated, easy to mount, and sports a small solar panel that Wyze reckons can keep the camera running on just one hour of sunlight a day (we shall see as I test through the gray depths of a Scottish winter). The Solar Cam Pan also features AI-powered person tracking, two-way audio, color night vision, a spotlight, and a siren, though you need a subscription, starting from $3 per month, to unlock smart features and get cloud video storage.

Wyze also announced a new, impressively affordable Battery Video Doorbell ($66). We started testing Wyze cameras again recently after it beefed up its security policies, but the repeated security breaches, exposing thousands of camera feeds to other customers, may still give you pause.

Meanwhile, TP-Link is the first manufacturer to combine solar power with floodlight capability in its new Tapo C615F Kit. The similar-looking but larger Tapo C615F is another 2K camera, but it pans 360 degrees, tilts 130 degrees, and, most importantly, has an adjustable 800-lumen floodlight.

TP-Link says its solar panel only needs 45 minutes of sun a day to keep the camera ticking, and it comes with a handy 13-foot cable, so you can install the solar panel in the best spot to catch those rays. The Tapo C615F ($100) is available now, and you can use the promo code 10TAPOFLDCAM to get $10 off if you’re quick. —Simon Hill

Fujifilm Updates Its X-T30 Line

Fujifilm has released the X-T30 III, an update to the company’s entry-level, SLR-shaped mirrorless X-T30 line. The third iteration of the X-T30 pairs Fujifilm’s familiar 26-MP X-Trans APS-C sensor with the latest Fujifilm processor, the X-Processor 5. The latter means that the X-T30 III is now roughly the same as the X-M5 and X-T50 in terms of internal features. All of Fujifilm’s film simulations are available, as are the subject-recognition AF modes. Video specs also see a bump up to 6.2K 30 fps open gate, and 4K 60 fps with a 1.18X crop.

The body is nearly identical to the previous model; the size, weight, and button/dial layout are the same as on the X-T30 II. The one change is that the control dial is now a film simulation dial, with three options for custom film recipes. The X-T30 III goes on sale in November at $999 for the body, or $1,150 for the body and a new 13- to 33-mm F3.5-6.3 zoom lens (20 mm- to 50 mm-equivalent). —Scott Gilbertson

Intel’s AI Experience Stores

In time for the peak shopping season, Intel is launching a variety of “AI Experience Stores” at a few key locations around the world. We don’t know exactly what they’ll be like, but Intel says these pop-ups will include an “AI-powered shopping experience” of some kind and are based on the initial launch of the trial run store in London last year.

If it keeps that same design ethos intact, these stores will be fairly immersive experiences. There will be lots of AI-driven demos on devices from the wider Windows laptop ecosystem, presumably to help drive interest and curiosity in what PCs can do. Interestingly, it comes on the back of a significant marketing push by Microsoft with its new Windows 11 AI experiences, trying to convince buyers to upgrade and explain some of the new AI features.

Here are the dates and locations below for when Intel’s stores will be open. —Luke Larsen

• New York City: 1251 6th Avenue (10/29 to 11/30)
• London: 95 Oxford Street (10/30 to 11/30)
• Munich: Viktualienmarkt 6 (10/30 to 12/9)
• Paris: 14 Boulevard Poissonniere (11/4 to 11/30)
• Seoul: OPUS 407, 1318-1 Seocho-dong (10/31 to 11/30)

Bus transportation is an essential part of nearly every public transit system. From school students to everyday workers, riders depend on buses to transport them to the essential destinations. Because most passengers start or end their journey by walking, providing safe access to bus stops is key to enhancing pedestrian safety.

Pedestrian fatalities in the United States have significantly increased in recent years, with 2022 recording the most fatalities since 1981. While prior studies have analyzed bus stop safety using crash data, not all crashes near bus stops were directly related to the stop itself.

Candace Brakewood, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, worked with Graduate Research Assistant Allison Rewalt and fellow CEE Professor Chris Cherry to address this gap by analyzing fatal transit bus stop-related pedestrian crashes from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and comparing them to other nearby fatal pedestrian crashes.

Their research, titled “An analysis of pedestrian safety at bus stops using FARS data,” was recently published in the Journal of Safety Research.

The research was funded through the Center for Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety(CPBS), which is a Tier I University Transportation Center (UTC) that is led by the University of New Mexico and includes UT, and a Dwight D. Eisenhower Graduate Fellowship that Rewalt received.

“Our work is unique because most prior studies used a more localized approach, relying on local or state crash data to understand the risks pedestrians face when walking to or from bus stops, whereas ours uses a national dataset to give us a bigger picture of what these risks look like nationwide,” Rewalt said. “Because our work is generalizable, it can be used to inform bus stop safety improvements across the country.”

Midblock stops present danger

The study uses pedestrian crash data that explicitly identifies bus stop-related crashes, providing a more nuanced assessment of crash risk factors for transit passengers and other pedestrians in the area, compared to previous studies that relied simply on proximity or other measures.

One of the key takeaways from the research is that there are three typical types of crashes that result in pedestrian fatalities at bus stops:

• pedestrians crossing to/from a bus stop at an intersection
• pedestrians waiting on the roadside at a midblock stop
• pedestrians crossing to/from a midblock stop.

Midblock stops are especially high risk, especially on high-speed arterials. Midblock locations increased the chances of a fatal crash by 4.7 to 5.2 times depending on the size of the buffer zone used in the analysis.

Pedestrians waiting on the roadside at a midblock stop is a crash subtype that is distinct to transit passengers, who often wait at the roadside for the bus to come, whereas other pedestrians would typically not be standing on the roadside for an extended period of time.

“This finding stood out because it points to a practical place to focus safety improvement near bus stops,” Rewalt said.

Finding infrastructure solutions

The UT researchers are hoping city planners, traffic engineers, and transit agencies can use their research findings to explore solutions to mitigate risk for pedestrians accessing buses. High-visibility crosswalks, especially at midblock crossings, or relocating bus stops closer to a signalized intersection could be infrastructure improvements to consider.

“We have an ongoing follow-up research project that continues to explore pedestrian safety at bus stops using a different nationwide dataset called CRSS that includes non-fatal crashes,” Brakewood said. “The overarching goal is to identify bus stop-related crash characteristics and determine which factors lead to more severe outcomes. We will have more results to share on the new project in the near future.”