Unit 3 A healthy life reading课时作业

Ⅰ.阅读理解

Since Henry Ford turned it into a massmarket product a century ago，the car has delivered many benefits.It has promoted economic growth，increased social mobility and given people a lot of fun.But the car has also brought many problems.It pollutes the air，creates traffic jams and kills people.An astonishing 1.24 million people die，and as many as 50 million are hurt，in road accidents each year.

Drivers and passengers waste around 90 billion hours in traffic jams each year.In some carchoked cities as much as a third of the petrol used is burned by people looking for a space to park.

Fortunately，a new technology promises to make motoring safer，less polluting and less tendency to hold­ups."Connected cars"-which may eventually develop into driverless cars but for the foreseeable future will still have a human at the wheel-can communicate wirelessly with each other and with traffic­management systems，avoid walkers and other vehicles and find open parking spots.

Some parts of the transformation are already in place.Many new cars are already being fitted with equipment that lets them keep their distance and stay in a motorway automatically at a range of speeds.Soon，all new cars in Europe will have to be able to warn the emergency services if their on­board sensors(传感器) discover a crash.Singapore has led the way with using variable tolls(道路通行费) to smooth traffic flows during rush­hours; Britain is pioneering "smart motorways"，whose speed limits vary constantly to achieve a_similar_effect.Combined，these new inventions could create a much more highly effective system in which cars and their drivers are constantly warned of dangers and showed the ways，traffic always flows at the proper speed and vehicles can travel closer together，yet with less risk of crashing.

In the past，more people driving meant more roads，more jams，more death and