Numerous technologies have been deployed to assist and manage transportation. But recent concerted efforts in academia and industry point to a paradigm shift in intelligent transportation systems. Vehicles will carry computing and communication platforms, and will have enhanced sensing capabilities. They will enable new versatile systems that enhance transportation safety and efficiency and will provide infotainment. This article surveys the state-of-the-art approaches, solutions, and technologies across a broad range of projects for vehicular communication systems.

The concept of competence in speech communication situations is explored here, with emphasis on the identification of competency as an educational objective. A review of relevant research in the relatively new area of communicative competence is presented, as well as an examination of the theoretical and conceptual issues relating to it. Competence research reveals a number of "dimensions" or components of competence, the most clearly defined being empathy, behavioral flexibility, and interaction management. With a basic knowledge of which communication abilities are necessary for adequate functioning in society, educators are then challenged to devise educational strategies to give students the knowledge and experiential learning necessary to achieve competence in this vital area of their lives.

In a context where the study of communications tends to focus only on the mobility of information, to the neglect of that of people and commodities, this article explores the potential for a closer integration between the fields of communications and transport studies. Against the presumption that the emergence of virtuality means that material geographies are no longer of consequence, the role of mediated ‘technologies of distance’ is considered here in the broader contexts of the construction (and regulation) of a variety of physical forms of mobility and the changing modes of articulation of the virtual and material worlds.