Check out the oscillating light bar on the top of this S2 Metrobus headed to Federal Triangle. Doesn't that remind you of someone special? Say a Knight Industries Two Thousand?
While there's no word from WMATA if we'll start hearing the voice of William Daniels over the intercom or if bus drivers will become hearth-throbbing David Hasselhoff's, WMATA is getting all techno-saftey.
The light bar is apparently a low-tech way to alert pedestrians to buses, even though recent bus-pedestrian mishaps have been driver error. A more effective and more high tech solution using ultrasound is undergoing testing.
Seymor is on 50 buses already and its designed to help bus drivers avoid cars and other objects in their most critical blind spots, along the sides of the buses.
Six sensors which are attached to the sides of the buses, emit a high frequency sound wave. The waves bounce off large “hard” objects and echo back to the bus. If another vehicle, or a bicycle gets close, amber warning lights flash on three mounted dashboard displays and an alarm sounds, alerting the driver of the hazard.
WMATA even has an interesting video of the system in action:
Now if only they could employ an ultrasound zapper to prod cars out of bus lanes and passengers past the back door we could get to work quicker and safer.
For all the high-tech gadgets, it would sure be nice if Metro bus drivers would just stop doing things like speeding and running red lights. I work in the Federal Center SW area, and the P1, P2 and P6 bus drivers down here rather famously both speed to make changing lights and blow right through red lights when it is 4 ways red for pedestrian crossing.
The latter happened just this morning directly in front of me in the crosswalk, and I observed the former on Friday morning. So far only 1 bus-pedestrian crosswalk fatality that I know of in the area (and it was last year), but sure seems like another one is just bound to happen at some point.
Posted by: Kelly at March 5, 2007 3:58 PM
From the very short video, the alarm looks like the kind of thing that will go off far too often and become quickly ignored - like background noise.
So is that what that bar is for. As a driver, its hypnotic flicker rate seems like it might cause an increase in traffic accidents.
Posted by: Mike at July 19, 2007 3:42 PM
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