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Problem: Civilian vehicles rounding corners and driving over hills often collide with stationary emergency vehicles and their personnel.
One Solution: Equip ambulances, police cars, postal trucks, fire trucks, garbage trucks and similar vehicles with a short range transmitter. The transmitters
will send a proximity warning signal to surrounding civilian vehicles. The warnings would be received by a low cost receiver (government mandated possibly. The received signals could flash lights on the instrument panel and sound alarms through vehicle safety belt unlatched/door ajar signal systems. The alarms would follow a designated, universally recognizable, sound/flashing light pattern.
Oct. 25 2005: A friend of mine suggested that the emergency vehicle might send a broad spark-gap transmitter type "jamming" signal that would broadcast over all AM/FM frequecies at a short range. This could cause some complaints over broken up broadcasts though.
Nov. 19, 2005: The same friend mentioned above found this idea has already been baked. See link below. Thanks Mike!
Emergency Alert
http://www.emergalert.com.au/
[Sunstone, Nov 19 2005]
Safety Alert® Traffic Warning System
http://www.safety-alert.com/index1.html
Broadcasts a radar signal up to 1 mile ahead and behind the emergency vehicles to warn traffic of emergency vehicles, trains and road hazards. Can't locate URL in the Internet Archive, patent date unknown. [Sunstone, Nov 25 2007]
[link]
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The alarms could broadcast signal on all radio frequencies, AM and FM. It could be a strong signal but use the emergency vehicle as its antenna, and so have short range. This would not help people who werelistening to CDs, though, and so rather than retrofit vehicles with special receivers, there will be a law mandating that all drivers must listen to the radio. |
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