(hell with I'm cranking up the power, yee ha!)From Gold Iron: Here is one of the current technologies for tracking motorcyclists. This technology has other uses by LEO and other government agencies than 911 response.
ScienceDaily (Feb. 15, 2008) — Brycen Spencer, an engineering student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has designed a safety helmet that could help save the lives of thousands of outdoor sports enthusiasts involved in accidents each year. His Wireless Impact Guardian, or WIG, which signals for help even when the wearer is unconscious, is a giant leap forward in helmet safety.
“The WIG will be activated when it is buckled on,” says Spencer. “If you fall and hit your head, the helmet will detect that and beep for a minute or so. If you don’t turn it off, WIG sends for help, either directly to 911 or to a third-party service that relays the emergency call to 911. Included with the message will be a GPS location giving your geographical coordinates so the emergency team knows precisely where you are.”
Nicknamed “The OnStar of Helmets,” Spencer’s WIG would be a boon for motorcyclists, bicyclists, ATV enthusiasts and others, especially those venturing into remote areas. There were 113,900 ATV injuries requiring emergency room treatment in 2002 and 76,000 motorcycle-related injuries in 2004. In many instances, victims had to wait a long time for emergency response crews to find them.
At this time, the WIG has no competition. A similar invention on the market is a personal locator beacon that skiers and others use in case of accidents, but this device must be manually activated. There is also a football helmet that detects if the wearer suffers a concussion, but nothing on the market phones for help automatically like the WIG.
Spencer has started a seed-stage business with a business plan that recently won a $1,250 prize from the Executive Summary Competition in the UMass Amherst Technology Innovation Challenge. Last spring he also won $1,250 from the Grinspoon Foundation for Entrepreneurship, whose scholarship provides monetary awards to students who demonstrate the “entrepreneurial spirit” and who have a strong desire to own their own businesses. Spencer has also invested $2,500 of his own money, no small amount for a student, in a one-year Provisional Patent that will lead, patent pending, to a 20-year Utility Patent.
Spencer has used all the prize money to buy the inner workings for his helmet, including an accelerometer to detect any impact that exceeds a predetermined safety level and a communications device to provide the user’s location for rescue crews. All the electronics are small and relatively inexpensive, allowing them to fit in the current helmet configuration with little physical modification or increase in overall helmet price.
In January, Spencer was invited to the Advanced Invention to Venture (AI2V) workshop in intensive entrepreneurship held for student business teams from UMass Amherst. The AI2V workshop was hosted by Robert Hyers of the UMass Amherst mechanical and industrial engineering department and sponsored by several campus groups including the Isenberg School of Management, the College of Engineering, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, the UMass Amherst Innovation System and the UMass Entrepreneurship Initiative. All these entities are working closely to help student entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground.
After the success he’s already enjoyed with his invention, and with all the help he’s getting on campus to incubate his new business, Spencer is convinced his WIG is an idea whose time has come.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Massachusetts AmherstNOW CONSIDER HO W BADLY THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOU IN A HELMET !
NOW CONSIDER FROM A POST BELOW:
Oregon's Department of Transportation (ODOT) has released a report on a pilot program that examined the feasibility of replacing the gas tax with a fee based on miles driven in Oregon and collected at fueling stations. The pilot program also explores the feasibility of using this system to collect congestion charges.
ODOT launched a 12-month pilot program in April 2006 designed to test the technological and administrative feasibility of this concept. The program included 285 volunteer vehicles, 299 motorists, and two service stations in Portland. The 101 page report can be found at www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/RUFPP/docs/RUFPP_finalreport.pdf.
Watch out for this as there is going to be a nationwide push for this. We have posted on it before and it is coming. We ain't lied yet. This issue was at Senate committee meeting aired on C-span. Because of increased use of Fuel efficient vehicles states are not collecting enough tax revenue to keep up with the nations deteriorating infrastructure. Will need to do some checking but have yet to hear where your motorcycle per mile charge won't be subsidizing an SUV's per mile cost. During the hearing there was also much discussion of creating toll zones on the interstates around heavily congested cities, Los Angles, Huston, Dallas, Northeast corridors, Central Florida south, as a way to reduce traffic on the interstates. Currently this is against federal law. However there were not many objections to changing the law. It was pretty much agreed that this needs to be done but introduced gradually so the public would buy into it. Where do Motorcycles fit in? Discussion I have heard is that they would like to reroute them from the interstates in heavily congested areas. IF ANYONE HAS MORE INFO ON THESE PLANS AND THE VALIDITY OF THE ABOVE OR LACK THEREOF PLEASE SEND IT AND WE WILL POST IT
THEN CONSIDER IN ORDER FOR THE ABOVE PLAN TO WORK YOUR VEHICLE HAS TO COMMUNICATE WITH SOMEBODY OR SOMETHING BESIDES YOU!
OH, you thought the clerk at the gas mart was going to take your word on how many miles you drove????? Yeah o.k. I admit it. I'm whacked. Nothing we have ever written here is true. I stick nine volt batteries to my tongue while running a dry tattoo needle up and down my leg and type this crap at the same time. But what thing I never did do. And that was believe that we should be invading Iraq when "Bin Laden" was in Afghanistan. How about you?Add to Technorati Favorites
