h a l f b a k e r yCogito, ergo sumthin'
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A device would mount on to your car tire that is a shock activated gps sensor, whenever a shock registers at "pothole magnitude" the device marks a waypoint and takes a picture of said pothole documenting your pothole incident.
There are TWO ways in which this device can be used:
THE EVIL WAY: If
damage has occured to your car a lawsuit would be automatically be initiated against the municipality responsible for fixing the road and your insurance company would be sent the documentation on the pothole and a bill for repairs to your car.
THE NICE WAY: All information collected by the "pothole sensors" would be sent to an online database (potholes-r-us.com) where donations would be accepted to pay for the repairs and people themselves would actually pick up a shovel and fix the roads.
P.S. If you live where the roads are nice and the grass is green this invention may have to be modified to your liking.
For example, If you run over an Armadillo in Texas it will automatically phone your brother Jeb and let him know exactly where he can go to pick up the road kill for his BBQ.
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Potholes and speedbumps have different acceleration profiles : first up, then down for speed bump, and vice versa for pothole. On the other hand, a speedbump might just as well be an elongated pothole, for most intents and purposes, so why differentiate? |
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Wouldn't Evil Drivers fear that such a system would record the times and places where they have run people over? [+] |
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Perhaps the system could be sold in 'Evil' and 'Nice' versions. Those subscribing to the Nice version could use material from speedbumps to fill potholes, while those subscribing to the Evil version pay the additional local taxes required to support payouts resulting from their claims. |
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Running over people is a lot different to potholes. People are more crunchy and if you're lucky they've been removed by the next day when you go that way again, so you don't need to know where they were. |
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Sounds pretty good. I'd expect that the "evil" way would end up being the only effective way. Otherwise, people who drive over the potholes would be doing the repairs themselves already, but I could be wrong. |
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Simply fitting these devices (an accelerometer on a wishbone either side and a feed to the satnav in the vehicle anyway) to all the runaround vehicles the authority runs to log the hotspots, possibly even detecting general road quality, to priotitise road repairs. |
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Saying that, most modern vehicles probably have enough instrumentation on them to do this, meaning it's more a case of software than anything else. |
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Seriously, there's no real need to build it in the car. Just make it an iPhone app. (Or any other phone w/ GPS & accelerometers) |
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Anytime you're going faster than running speed, and it bumps down.... report your coords to the server. |
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I seem to recall that I've seen such a thing used to assess airport runways (via an extra wheel on an inspection car possibly) although it may have been before GPS. However I've failed to find any mention of it. |
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It might have been pre-Google, in the dark ages of the Internet, so its absence could be explainable. |
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