Well, they’re reactive, so I think Rod Brooks would accept them as intelligent.
It’s a clever idea, but does nobody else find that video deeply disturbing? Who were their target audience when they planned it? The nice lady in the shiny top, poking the yellow goo - it’s just weird. Even for this corner of the internet.
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It would be fun to design the speed bump in such a way that it rips the undercarriage out of any car going twice the speed limit.
I mean, sure, it would cripple emergency vehicles and potentially cost lives, but can you really put a price on passive aggressive traffic calming?
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Well, look around you…
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In Lausanne, we have something called SMUR (http://www.lausanne.ch/lausanne-officielle/administration/securite-et-economie/service-de-protection-et-sauvetage/ambulance/presentation-ambulance/smur.html), which is a technique (staffing, equipment, tactics) that aims to reduce the impact of cardiovascular events by getting a cardiologist and his/her sack of blood thinning medicines and/or defibrillator next to the patient ASAP (as opposed to the “load and go” technique favored in the USA, which aim to bring the patient to the cardiologist as fast as possible). The equipment is a Subaru Outback (Subaru has a long lineage of rally championships). The tactics are terrifying speeds. It is truly a spectacle to see a SMUR car shoot by at 2 or 3 times the speed of normal traffic.
-jeff
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An Oz invention, BTW:
Bryce came up with ’em in 2010. AFAIAA, his were the first.
I was pretty sceptical until a beautiful woman in a shiny dress started doing things to it. Instantly I was sold on the idea because why not. Advertising has moved on so far since the 1950s. It’s all about science and common sense now.
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I owned an Outback for eight years, now my daughter and her husband use it to transport important cargo (my grandson.) It’s the station wagon version of the car that holds several long-distance speed records, maintaining an average of well over 200 kph for more than 160000 km. Yeah, they scream.
However, you perhaps don’t understand the US EMS system. Our ALS ambulance crews are fully qualified to administer drugs and use telecommunications (including voice and remote EKG) to consult with their base cardiologists. And we have far more ALS paramedics than we do cardiologists.
I’m a BLS emergency medic who works about 40 minutes from the nearest hospital over roads that are both rough and often icy, with enough turns and other obstructions that even with good conditions it’s dangerous to go past the posted speeds (elk, for instance, can truly ruin your day.) In town it doesn’t take much of a collision risk to negate any advantages that speed might offer, and the ambulances are as large as they are to allow facilities that an Outback simply can’t offer – such as two-person CPR in transit, with respirator, fluid replacement, IV drugs, and (of course) AED.
When we really need speed we use aircraft. A medical evacuation helicopter can carry only one patient, the pilot, and a flight medic. That’s where we trade the increased life support capability for time, because (again) my area of operation is four hours by road from the nearest Level One hospital. By air it’s closer to 45 minutes; if necessary it can stop by the local hospital (ten minutes) for blood if necessary. That’s what we do for major trauma.
Part of this is simply due to our population density (or lack thereof). New Mexico has eight times the land area of Switzerland, but Switzerland has more than four times the population. Yes, Switzerland is mountainous – likewise, NM. From my home I can look at a 3000 meter peak thirty km away; it’s far from the largest in the State (canton). My town has less than 10000 people and is more than an hour by road from a major hospital. Our ambulances have no choice but to be prepared to provide a wide range of high-level medical care – the nearest cardiologist may well be hours away.
Finally, the “speed bumps” mentioned in this article are for residential streets in cities, and no matter the capabilities of the Outback (a car I really do love), they are no help when screaming down residential streets where there are children at play. Nothing substitutes for reaction time, and getting to a heart patient a few seconds sooner is not worth killing a pedestrian.
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What really amazes me about this entire thread is that nobody sank to perverse remarks about the cover animation graphic. “Well done!” to all of you for taking the high road. On some other fora I would have expected a long chain of innuendo and outright salacious commentary with no linkage to the story.
[quote=“jra, post:45, topic:106110”]
aims to reduce the impact of cardiovascular events by getting a cardiologist and his/her sack of blood thinning medicines and/or defibrillator next to the patient ASAP[/quote]
The USA does a distributed resource approach - there are defibrillators (computer controlled ones) all over the place, in schools, university buildings, shopping centers, large stores, airports, and other places. Almost all firefighters and police have advanced first aid training, as do many “civilians”.
We have one of those at our work.
The parking garage at my office has this problem. If you go in one side, 2 speed bumps. If you go in the other side, none. I don’t know why anyone goes in the bumpy side. I drive around to avoid it.
Sounds to me like someone heard the phrase “smart materials,” misunderstood how to use it, and tried to substitute a fancier word. Oh, and thought it was a useful and meaningful category in the first place.
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How about “digital” or “smart”?
Thanks for the correction. I was reacting to someone talking about taking it nice and slow in an ambulance, and it made me think of how SMUR works in an urban setting: turn on the blue lights and go like hell to the patient, at least on the major arteries where I am most likely to see them.
It just amuses me that SMUR’s strategy is essentially “rally driving in cities, where the co-pilot has an MD”.
I found this criteria for when to load and go, but I suspect this is something that is highly location dependent: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Emergency_medical_responder_(EMR)/Transport_decision
And this counter-point: http://emstheorytopractice.com/2011/11/20/load-and-go-just-needs-to-go/
-jeff
“Load and go” is actually a technical term in EMS. The objective in general is to stabilize the patient to the extent necessary for safe transport, so for instance someone who is not breathing needs to have the airway established, respiration either restored or supported (rescue breathing) and if the heart has stopped (a common consequence of respiratory arrest) then either restarted or supported via CPR.
If the nature of illness or injury is such that little can be done at the scene (e.g. serious burns) then you’re in “load and go” territory and that’s the outcome of the EMS rubric. The objective is to get the patient to definitive care as quickly as can safely be managed. An example would be a penetrating wound: secure the penetrating object so as to prevent further injury, apply direct pressure if necessary to prevent loss of blood, and boogie – because at that point there’s nothing left to be done in the field and any attempts simply delay surgery.
US medical experts point to the French treatment of Princess Diana as the opposite: her internal deceleration injury could have been readily treated by emergency surgery – but they tried to treat it on-scene until the loss of perfusion was fatal. Those calls are hard, no question. Worse still in the USA, where the cost of an overly cautious decision in the field can bankrupt the patient (on the order of $40000 for a helicopter evacuation.) I’ve been doing it part-time for twenty years and, so far, no regrets but lots of anxiety.
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“Gendarme couché” in French.
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wtf is up with the model, why does she look like something out of Barbarella? Why not just put her in a white lab coat. I can’t believe no one is talking about that…
The other alternative is speed dips though, which tend to increase in depth as resurfacing occurs. There were a few in my parents’ neighborhood that were almost impossible to traverse without bottoming out for a few years.
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