(this is a rewritten version of the original one)

I was recently thinking of a way to stop car accidents. So I started googling around looking up information and found that theres just the basic airbags and seat belts that are the main things saving us from dying in the accident. They are making cars so they crunch more safely but your car is still getting wrecked isn't it?

You get into your vehicle in the morning to get to work. When you sit down a voice informs you to remember your seat belt and slip on your VSD. A VSD would resemble a heart monitor detector, the ones that slip on your finger and detect your pulse and what not.

Your driving down the road and you notice the light at the intersection up ahead is turning from green to yellow. You speed up to make the light and in the middle of the intersection your pulse increases a little bit but not enough to matter. When you glance to your right you see a car traveling around 50 - 60 mph straight towards you. Your Adrenaline starts pumping and your pulse sky rockets. The VSD detects the sudden change and drains the battery creating a 5 - 10 second magnet push around your car. The push stops the car from crashing into you at high speeds.

A back up battery that is maybe a fourth the size of the original one is saved for airbags incase you swerve into a tree or something else that is nonmetal.

This would mean that car companies would have to install all the essential metals somewhere in the car and the necessities of a magnetic field.

This idea is completely plausible considering magnetic shields have been used. I haven't found anywhere that it is used like this so the idea is original, atleast i think anyways.

*thanks to [pooduck] for the extra battery idea*
-- seventhinline, Jul 30 2005

[7th], Welcome to the Bakery and all that. You have achieved some good input previously but could you please revisit this one and make some sense?
Ta, Gnomethang
-- gnomethang, Jul 30 2005


Can I ask how the airbags would activate if the battery was drained of all power?
-- pooduck, Jul 30 2005


A well-turned set of rollerblades and the right clothes in sight and I would drain my battery repeatedly on many calm and uncomplicated drives about town.
-- reensure, Jul 30 2005


OK, where do we start?
(1) Using the driver's physiological responses as a crash warning is flawed. You need at least a couple of heartbeats to detect an elevated pulse rate; blood pressure does not rise instantaneously; and elevated adrenalin levels would be hard to monitor (you going to ask the driver to insert a needle?) and would be wayyyy slow. By the time you detect these physiological changes, the accident has already happened.

(2) The car that does the most damage is often the one you didn't see.

(3)I am pretty sure that your 'magnetic shield' is bunk. If you can repel a non-magnetized lump of metal at all in this way, I'll guarantee it'll take more oomph than you can provide.

(4) Any force you apply is going to act equally on you and the oncoming vehicle. Do you really fancy having your car pushed backward into a pedestrian by the truck that happens to be passing, just because you were startled by something else at the time?

(5) Your magical magnetic shield is going to repel any nearby steel object. So, in your moment of panic, you will send all nearby vehicles swerving away from you, and catapault nearby wheelchairs and zimmer-frames into the distance.

(6) Depending on how your magical shield works, you may also expect to be sued by anyone nearby who's carrying a laptop. And by anyone who happened to have keys in their pocket at the time.

(7) I have more. Ask.
-- Basepair, Jul 30 2005


for example:

(8) if you are driving over anything large and metallic (tram lines, buried pipework....) you can expect to become airborne immediately after the collision, and then land on whatever hit you.
-- Basepair, Jul 30 2005


haha ok I guess this idea is bunk, thanks for the brutally honest truth though.

It's a rough design but it could be improved somehow.
-- seventhinline, Jul 31 2005


GPS feeds computer surrounding car's location (while broadcasting its own) & speed & activates brakes to prevent accidents?
-- Zimmy, Jul 31 2005


"Hey man, watch what my car does when I down this can of Jolt cola..."

What parts are you going to remove in order to add these huge magnets into the car? If you have a magnet that big, how does it keep from attracting the backside of the other magnets around you? Magnets are di-polar.

Cars are heavy enough as it is, and ironically getting heavier because of more severe protection requirements coming down the pipeline.
-- RayfordSteele, Jul 31 2005


//haha ok I guess this idea is bunk, thanks for the brutally honest truth though.// Now, that is the kind of reply I respect. I suspect I would not take it so well :-)
-- Basepair, Jul 31 2005



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