© 2001 jukal at cyberian dot org

Magnetism: a solution for enhanced traffic safety

Have we reached the point in which there is no way to make the day of the travelling salesman more secure? Surely not, in this article we discuss a solution based on magnetism, which noticeably reduces the amount of deadly traffic incidents. The idea is simple: turn power to magnetism and redirect or stop the car before it hits the target. // Update 26-Mar-2010 - the British military seems to be working on it, read more at Telegraph.co.uk.

Most of the deadly accidents happen when the moving vehicle either hits a solid stationary object or in a head-to-head collision of two vehicles moving to opposite direction. We have to find the answer to deal with especially these cases. Solution for stationary objects such as a bridge bearer According to my experience these large stationary artificial objects are usually situated near civilization. And when there is civilization there is energy - high voltage power. We use this energy to raise a electro magnetic shield - "a shield that pushes iron away" - around the object for the brief moment of collision. We need to detect the polarity of the incoming object, so that we can create the repelling effect. We need the energy for only around 5-10 microseconds if the shield is built on the correct moment - also, we can use the shield for only a very brief moment so that the polarity of the vehicle does not have time to shift. My understanding of physics is not good enough to tell how much energy we need - but it should be reasonable to expect that the energy to redirect the vehicle to safer direction is available for this short period - atleast through stored capacity.   So, how do we know when to raise the shield? Either we place motion detectors on the object or we need communication between the vehicle and the object. Ie. either the object knows when it will be hit or the car tells when it's about to hit. In the latter case the solution could be a simple RF link between the two nodes. Naturally we also need a security solution to avoid tampering with the system, public key cryptography (unique keys for each vehicle) could be one solution for this.   Solution for the traffic flow and head-to-head accidents   When a vehicle is moving at a certain constant speed, let's say 100 km /h, the engine of the vehicle has excess power left. In the regular traffic flow (cars moving to same direction) we can use this excess power to control other cars. A simple case: a car behind me is approaching too fast and is bound to hit, the driver of the other car does not brake in time. So. Let's help him, we take the excess 40 kw from our engine and raise a electro magnetic field behind us and force the other car to slow down.   The case of head-to-head accident is probably the trickiest, not theoritically, but in practise. We need a dedicated processor capable of reacting fast enough at the cumulative speed of 220 km /h for example. Then we take similar technology as used with the stationary objects to recognise the moment of collision. At the correct moment both cars raise for example positive electro magnetic shields to redirect the both cars to safer direction.   So there, I feel lighter, the world is a more secure place to drive now...   << Back to Amazon Discoveries   Copyright © 6/Sep/2001 Jussi Kallioniemi [ jukal at cyberian.org ] The oddities presented here (that are not copyrighted or patented by someone else, ofcourse) are released under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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