Engadget looks at the new Cordon photo-radar technology.

Developed by Simicon, this new speed sensor promises to take highway surveillance to new heights of precision. Unlike most photo radar systems, which track only one violator at a time, Simicon’s device can simultaneously identify and follow up to 32 vehicles across four lanes. Whenever a car enters its range, the Cordon will automatically generate two images: one from wide-angle view and one closeup shot of the vehicle’s license plate. It’s also capable of instantly measuring a car’s speed and mapping its position, and can easily be synced with other databases via WiFi, 3G or WiMAX.

Brian T. Weaver, P.E. and Steve A. Rundell, Ph.D., P.E., featured in a Gannett news article regarding the new Detroit Office.

This engineering application known as “injury causation analysis” can be explained in simple terms, said Weaver: “In order to understand the injury, you have to understand the event.”

Yet there’s no denying the complexity of what they do, what they know and what they need to find out. Studying automobile collisions calls for analyzing evidence of speed and other factors to match them with the severity of an impact, for example. Or perhaps a case requires investigating how a bone broke in an accident or the effects of a faulty spinal implant, tapping into a solid knowledge of biomechanics — which applies mechanical engineering principles to biological systems. It’s about keen intuition, an eye for detail and the ability to communicate findings clearly.

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Gizmodo, of all blogs, reports on the expanded use of 3D laser scanners by police in the UK.

In the UK as in the US, a car wreck involving injuries or fatalities must be painstakingly recorded and preserved for insurance and court proceedings. Police investigators might block off the roadway for several hours as they take pictures of the scene and record measurements to log what happened. In the US, accident reconstruction is also big business, with experts retained by lawyers to discuss speeds, trajectories and impact physics.

The laser scanner will capture a 360-degree image of a crash scene, the BBC reports. Mounted on a tripod, a laser scans the horizon and records up to 30 million separate data points, down to sub-millimeter resolution. Each sweep takes four minutes, and investigators will typically make four sweeps, the BBC says. The image can then be processed into a 3-D computer model, allowing investigators to see where the vehicles are located relative to each other, tire skid marks, and other evidence.

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A new paper looks at the effects of external costs of vehicle weight. An extra 1,000 pounds increases crash fatalities by 47%.

Here’s the abstract from Pounds that Kill: The External Costs of Vehicle Weight:

Heavier vehicles are safer for their own occupants but more hazardous for the occupants of other vehicles. In this paper we estimate the increased probability of fatalities from being hit by a heavier vehicle in a collision. We show that, controlling for own-vehicle weight, being hit by a vehicle that is 1,000 pounds heavier results in a 47% increase in the baseline fatality probability. Estimation results further suggest that the fatality risk is even higher if the striking vehicle is a light truck (SUV, pickup truck, or minivan). We calculate that the value of the external risk generated by the gain in fleet weight since 1989 is approximately 27 cents per gallon of gasoline. We further calculate that the total fatality externality is roughly equivalent to a gas tax of $1.08 per gallon. We consider two policy options for internalizing this external cost: a gas tax and an optimal weight varying mileage tax. Comparing these options, we find that the cost is similar for most vehicles.

H/T: Freakonomics

USA Today examines the issues surrounding drugged driving and decriminalizing illicit drugs.

Drivers who die in crashes test positive for drugs 25% of the time, a new study finds.

Researchers examined data on more than 44,000 drivers in single-vehicle crashes who died between 1999 and 2009. They found that 24.9% tested positive for drugs and 37% had blood-alcohol levels in excess of 0.08, the legal limit. Fifty-eight percent had no alcohol in their systems; 5% had less than 0.08. The data were from a government database on traffic fatalities.

Study co-authors Eduardo Romano and Robert Voas of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Calverton, Md., say their study is one of the first to show the prevalence of drug use among fatally injured drivers. Among drivers who tested positive for drugs, 22% were positive for marijuana, 22% for stimulants and 9% for narcotics.

Photo credit: Matt Rourke

Hat Tip: Freakonomics

Wired magazine looks at the future of black box technology, specifically black box technology in planes. New units could use ‘the cloud’ to prevent data loss in an accident.

The Iridium network, which covers the entire globe with 66 orbiting satellites, could probably accommodate the bandwidth needed to transmit at least the 88 required parameters from the 8,000 or so commercial flights in operation at any moment. Krishna M. Kavi, a professor of computer science at the University of North Texas, estimates that the worldwide demand would be about 64 megabits per second, only a portion of which would have to be sent by satellite. Using different assumptions, Seymour Levine, an inventor who has devised his own telemetry, estimates the maximum bandwidth requirement at 25 Mbps and the total storage requirement for a day’s worth of data at 100 gigabytes—a quarter the speed of a fast broadband connection and less disk space than an iPod classic.

This data, aggregated terrestrially instead of scattered among thousands of black boxes constantly flying around the world, would inevitably call forth other uses. Airlines could mine it for information about flight operations and use it to schedule maintenance and fine-tune fuel efficiency. Jet engines are already among the most closely monitored machines in the world, but manufacturers can always use more data; FLYHT AeroMechanical Services claims that its system, called AFIRS, detected and transmitted a warning about an out-of-spec turbine vibration in time to prevent a possibly catastrophic in-flight failure aboard one of its customers’ planes. But to really think outside the, um, box, you have to consider the implications of having all this information while the airplanes are still in the air.

Photo credits: Henrik Knudsen, Brown Bird Design

The New York Times reports on the new regulations from the Consumer Product Safety Commission regarding baby cribs. The author visits the testing laboratory for Delta Children’s Products.

The most pronounced change is that drop-side cribs, long a nursery staple, are prohibited from being sold. But manufacturers must also strengthen the crib slats and mattress supports, make crib hardware more durable and subject their products to tougher testing.

“Our standard is so rigorous that a new, compliant crib has to go through more than 75,000 cycles of testing (shake tests, mattress support tests, slat tests) to get certified,” Scott Wolfson, the safety commission spokesman, said in an e-mail.

But even as the new standards took effect on June 28, some manufacturers had not had all of their cribs certified by testing laboratories, frustrating some retailers who have been stuck with cribs that they are not permitted to sell. Manufacturers discontinued other cribs that most likely would not have met the new standards, so retailers sold them at steep discounts or gave them to charities before the rules took effect.

Photo Credit: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Popular Mechanics magazine looks at automotive light bulb technology.

We already use LEDs for taillights, a practice started by Cadillac on the 2000 DeVille. Aside from giving engineers the ability to design lights with substantially different styling, LEDs consume very little energy and illuminate 400 to 500 milliseconds faster than an incandescent lamp, which provides that cellphone-chattin’ texter behind you an additional 40 to 44 feet of warning (at 60 mph) that you’re on the brakes.

While we wait for LED headlights to become commonplace, some DIYers might opt to switch their taillights to LEDs. Be warned: They draw so little juice that a conventional turn signal switch won’t cycle—so if you choose to convert to LEDs, you’ll need a different flasher relay that’s not dependent on load, or to add ballast resistors to draw sufficient current.

HID (high-intensity-discharge) lights are often installed as original equipment on high-end cars. But there are plenty of aftermarket conversions to be found (and even some ordinary quartz-iodine bulbs incorrectly labeled as HID; caveat emptor). These aftermarket conversions use an HID arc lamp and a ballast, just like the OEM kind, but are designed to retrofit into a conventional socket and reflector designed for quartz bulbs. They can be had for as little as $75 a pair, substantially less than the OEM prices for factory-installed HIDs. Unfortunately, the shape of the tungsten filament (of the original bulb) is different from the shape of the arc in the HID envelope, which makes the HID beam pattern of the assembly unpredictable. While you may be able to see fine, it will throw glare in odd directions, which will make it difficult for you to see in any kind of precipitation. It will also shine into oncoming drivers’ eyes.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website maintains important information about transportation safety. In particular, there is a valuable introduction to EDR’s (or Event Data Recorders). Here is an excerpt:

What is an EDR?  What is its purpose?

An Event Data Recorder (EDR) is a function or device installed in a motor vehicle to record technical vehicle and occupant information for a brief period of time (seconds, not minutes) before, during and after a crash for the purpose of monitoring and assessing vehicle safety system performance.  For instance, EDRs may record (1) pre-crash vehicle dynamics and systemstatus, (2) driver inputs, (3) vehicle crash signature, (4) restraint usage/deployment status, and (5) post-crash data such as the activation of an automatic collision notification (ACN) system.

What is the difference between an EDR and a “black box”?

“EDR” is the term NHTSA has coined to refer to the device commonly installed on motor vehicles to record vehicle technical data for a brief period of time in the event of an accident.  In contrast, airplanes, trains, and ships use sophisticated recording devices, known as black boxes, that record data continuously throughout the operation of the vehicle, capture much more data than EDRs, and, and in some cases, can record sound.

Do all types of vehicles have them?  If not, what percentage does?

Not all vehicles are equipped with EDRs.  Most manufacturers have made the decision to install some EDR capabilities in their current vehicles.  It is estimated that about 64% of the 2005 model year passenger vehicles have some EDR capability

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Baseball (and statistics) celebrity Bill James of Boston Red Sox fame is turning his focus to serial killers. Wired Magazine looks at James and his new book:

In addition to wondering about slugging percentages and pitching records, though, James has long been asking questions like: Why do some crimes become more famous than others? How reliable are eyewitness descriptions? Was the real Boston Strangler caught? Which is why his latest compendium of knowledge isn’t about baseball; it’s about murder. Called Popular Crime, it’s an omnibus of serial killers, kidnappers, assassins, and the occasional terrorist. Most of James’ research is drawn from his mammoth library of true-crime books. And after reading extensively about the Boston Strangler, he started to second-guess the supposed experts—the cops, the lawyers, the authors.

Photo: Jessica Dimmock