Blinking corner signals for pedestrians

For all those who text message while walking, they tend to look down at the floor, and may not notice the DONT WALK signal blinking across the street. this design is to have lights that grab their attention before the cross into the intersection by placing them on the ground in front of them. Or a barrier light that projects upwards certainly getting the pedestrians attention

This is what we did:

Rob and I just spent some time brainstorming and sketching and here are some pages of ideas we would like to further explore. Yesterday we talked to Lyn and she had us narrow down our topic ever further than communication. We decided to focus on car to pedestrian. The plan is for Mel and Sandra to do do some ideation and post them by Monday. Rob, Sam, and I will do some more and post on Wednesday and then on Thursday we discuss them on Skype.

Let me know how this sounds to everyone.

Ideation time

flashing zebra stripes














cars iluminating their speed. red when coming to a stop, green when gong fast.



















mirrors instead of headlights














zebra stripe crosswalk changes color to warn pedestrians. Red indicates car is approaching and green to indicate a clear path.














lazer headlights bounce from car to mirrors located on trees, light poles, and builings to create a lazer dividing line to warn pedestrians















a forcefield of lazer lights that surround the pedestrian or car to make more visible. Could possibly change colors to indicate distance.

Statistics of accidents and locations/situations

In NY state 2006 out of the 15,702 accidents, only 315 fatalities occurred, 2 were drivers and 1 was a passenger the rest were pedestrians.

71% of those accidents occured at the intersection, i repeat they occured at the intersection.

out of the 15,876 pedestrians that got hit (including fatal ones) 26% were hit while crossing with the signal (4,134) while 21% were crossing at with no crosswalk or signal.

The highest contributing factor for accident is Pedestrian/Bicyclist/other ped error/confusion at 21% while driver distraction came in 2nd followed by failure for people to yield properly.

I think thes numbers just show us slight ways of thinking about possible areas to focus on how we want to curb pedestrian vehicle accidents by place and situation through many of the technologies that philips can be a part of. it can be sensors, lights, gps, mapping, whatever. but i strongly think these are ways for us to apply those technologies to real life situations.

(the statistics above are the most recent ones i can find for the New York State stats)

car 2 car mindmap

heh guys...

sandra and i created a mindmap on our topic.
we tried to figure out the technology and everything.
check your mail for this pdf.
i think i will add some more things tomorrow because
i didnt have time to continue today and i am so tired i can not
think anymore.

if youre missing something let us know

enlightener

this is interesting..its a thin clear plastic sheet with a concentric surface that can be fittet to car windows and enhances the visibility of blind spots. i didnt know that before and its simple but cool.
pictures will follow!

http://www.lightdome.co.uk/iqs/sid.0003495020642820701544/Enlightener.html

lanelight LED road marker

in vienna in november 06 there was a special project with those led lanelights to prevent car-bycicle accidents. those small leds are integrated in the road. a radar sensor receives a signal if a byciclist gets close to the place (in that case a dangerous crossroad) and sends the signal to the lanelights which start to blink and tell the car that there is a bike coming close.
the project ended in april 07.
www.swarco.com

this company also sells variable message signs. check
http://windows-holzweg.tempw4.internet1.de/www.swarco.com/assets/assets-products/vms_folder_swarco_futurit_1.pdf if you want to.
those work with leds and therefore can be changed if needed.

car 2 car

i read an article about car 2 car communication that says that DaimlerChrysler began six years ago to work on a project called "FleetNet – Internet on the Road" (www.fleetnet.de )
Then they continued with "NOW" (Network On Wheels) and actually there is
this EU project "Willwarn" (Wireless Local Danger Warning), where they put the working technique into 4 cars and tested it on the street with success.
i think all of those projects deal with the same thing, wlan in cars and they develope quite well.
Now they are more or less done with all those technical problems and begin to think about standards.
They also say that in 2015 there will be the first cars on the market for sale.
i have pictures but im at work right now and post them when im home!

EMT Response from NYC

I went around to Saint Vincents hospital and Columbias hospital and tried to ask EMT's from their experiences why do they think pedestrian/vehicular accidents occur? what time do they most often occur? whos fault is it? how often? and how can we curb this rate. It was hard to get them to want to talk to me, but the few that did talk all basically said the same thing. For one its the pedestrians faul in almost all cases. they say its because pedestrians walk against the signal, theyre on their phones, or iPods, and basically are just being stupid. Most accidents occur during rush hours, and usually are not fatal accidents. On EMT said "its NYC, people have brain overload
Majority thought if the law would enforce pedestrian crosswalk and jaywalking their would be fewer accidents.

Above are a few of the recent In pavement lighting systems for pedestrian crosswalks. Case studies were taken by townships in places where these products were installed and recieved positive feedback. http://spotdevices.com/resources.html#casestudies is a link with those case studies in specific

Communications from sony

On a blog i found that sony has patented for some kind of communication system between cars to cars and other various ways of communicating. Mark rahy (a blogger) describes it a bit more. "We've all wished there was a way to communicate with other drivers on the road other than just displaying a certain finger. In an attempt to break into one market they haven't already overtaken, Sony recently filed for a patent that will allow you to send LED messages to other cars.

The invention is reliant on special headlights with built-in LEDs. Via these lights, you could send a message to the car in front of you, as long as that car has a special encoding modulator. The car would then speak the message to the driver.
Another, perhaps more practical, side of this patent is the part that mentions using similar technology for traffic lights. In other words, a traffic light could send a message to your car that the light just changed to green, causing your car to actually speak that message to you so you wouldn't have to worry about an onslaught of honks from angry drivers behind you."

I found the patent that sony filed for @

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220060119489%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20060119489&RS=DN/20060119489

Other articles of interest I've found (and plan on reading/posting this weekend)include:

"Relationship between Speed, Lateral Placement, and Drivers' Eye movement at Two-Lane Rural Highways"
*I'm about halfway through this and think that it's going to be a good resource for thinking about accidents that don't happen at intersections/crosswalks.

"Estimating the Value of Improved Street Lighting: A Factor Analytical Discrete Choice Approach"
*maybe this will give us inspiration?

"An examination of the fundamentals of road lighting for pedestrians and drivers"
*pointers?

Also, if we can't find enough statistics or the statistics we need, I found a database called Statistical Universe at the NYPL. Other statistics websites include CDC.org (which has National Vital Statistics Reports) and NHTSA.gov (which has pedestrian fatality statistics).

I'll be posting my assessment of the statistics, the articles listed above, and any other research I may have found over the next two days.

Objective measurement of the quality of airport lighting whilst in service

I thought that we could find inspiration in other fields that depend on transportation/lighting/communication. If any of you can understand what this article is talking about, please let the rest of us in on it. Regardless, I'm going to research more on airport runway lighting technologies.

Communication Technology

Today I researched car to car communication and found a few examples of technology that has been used in the past to aid such communication. If you are interested you can look further into any of these. Volvo's EyeCar seems crazy, I wonder if it actually worked.

Lidar - Lazer/Radar sensors
Monolithic Microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) - light sensors origionally developed for millitary use
High intensity discharge lighting (HID) - type of headlight
Hellaa - lanechange warning system
Mazda 626 SensorCar
Volvo's EyeCar - measures where drivers eyes are and adjusts headlights for optimal visibility
Donnelly VideoMirror Camera Vision System

HMB Reflectors: A New Horizontal Retro-reflecting system to Improve Safety at Pedestrian Crossings

This is a Swiss study for outfitting zebra stripes with higher visibility reflectors. Other technologies to note: SWARLO-System with in-road LED-illuminated markers, the XWALK lighted crosswalk system (Traffic Safety Corp., 2005) and the Intelligent Road Studs make by Astucia Ltd of the UK. I will do further research on those technologies as well as look up what Astucia Ltd is currently working on.

different types of front light

i think here you can see the development of philips lights.
if you look close u see the difference between the colors
and the distances.

some german stuff about figures compared to the us

reasons for accidents

some statistics

types of car lights

heh smart group

whats up?
im spending the whole day tomorrow on research.
didnt have time before.
what about u?
any new stuff?