Traffic safety centre north
Dynamic materials for increased traffic safety
Using thermochromatic materials on the pavement in order to make black ice visible.
Summary
I ran an EU funded design research project inspecting how to use smart materials to increase traffic safety.
I created a material library and plenty of concepts with a final prototype to be used by rescue personnel when practising extracting car crash victims.
Brief
To find out if smart or dynamic new materials could be used to enhance traffic safety in any way not thought previously possible or could made better.
To get contacts with industry leaders and establish relationships with them.
To make workshops with design students, surgeons, physiotherapists, smart material specialists, rescue personnel and design students.
Project
- Academic research for EU funded Traffic Safety Center North
- One year long project run by the University hospital of Umeå
- Stakeholders were mostly experts on spine injuries
- Individual and group work. Leading and creating workshops.
- Directing visual designers Martin Ruszkowski and Mikael Lugnegård to visualise the concepts created in those workshops
Tool created for getting mass user input
As we did the project we wanted to get the public's opinion on what matters in traffic safety for them. Doing a web survey would have been an option, but would have required a lot of work to get people to participate in it.
We devised a much simpler way to get these opinions via Twitter. Using the city of Umeå's main square we put up a wall where people would either write or draw their idea.
The pens used were eBeam interactive whiteboard markers and with some clever hack I managed to get the images in to Twitter to appear as inline images.
This way we only needed to read the images from the Twitter account and analyse them.
Process & concepts
The images you see in this page are created by visual designers Martin Ruszkowski and Mikael Lugnegård under my direction. These concepts were created from the results of several workshops that we had with various disciplines.
First of all to get ourselves acquainted with what happens to the human body in traffic accidents, we held a workshop with surgeons and physiotherapists.
The second workshop was held together with the fire brigade on-site when they (and us) were practicing how to cut open a car and getting the patient out safely.
Frangibolts
To ease the access of rescue personnel to patients in accident situations using special heavy-duty bolts called Frangibolts used in space rocket fuel tanks in the correct places. They are made from special alloy that snap in two when enough electricity is applied.
We find out in our field study that if rescue personnel could access the patient sooner a lot of lives could be saved. This method could save a few critical minutes.
Third and fourth workshops were held with ambulance staff and we were mostly figuring out how transport the patient more safely using new materials.
The fifth workshop was held together with Midé Technologies and design school students where we started find out what to do with the materials, how they work and how we could use them in and out of vehicle traffic safety.
Adaptive speed bumps
Using rheopectic fluids in order to make speed bumps harder when driven over with excessive speed and softer when driven over slowly.
I created a prototype out of all the things we learned. This small robotic part simulates spinal fractures in practice dummies.
This part is replicating the approximate size and normal movement of the C2-C3 vertebrae, which are the most critical ones when extracting the patient.
I managed to create a 6 DOF simulated fracture when so needed and get the values out, if the fracture was moved in anyway.
This is important knowledge for ambulance personnel to get when practicing, so they know how to transport the patient without moving the spine at all. We did have all the values needed from the medical research we gathered and managed to alert every time spine moved too much if at all