The Black Box in the Plains - Essay Example

The black box Introduction New Zealand’s small population and high road-accident rate indicate that many people have either been involved in an accident or know someone who has. In fact, it has been shown that the number of casualties in vehicle and road accidents in New Zealand registered every year is increasing in relation to the total population. In 2008 alone, 366 people were reported to have been killed due to vehicular accidents, with a high injury rate. This statistics is almost equivalent to the number of casualties from a Boeing737 plane crash. Meanwhile, in 2007 the total number of people who fell victims to road accidents was 16,013. Communities as well as families can be deeply affected by the death of a member. Trends : The definition of the black boxes. A black box is a device or theoretical constructs with proverbial or given characteristic input, output and data transfer methods that are unknown or such-and-such constituents and means of operation. It is a closed computer program and its implementation is "opaque", hence the term black box.  Today the boxes store data on memory chips and are painted bright orange in order to make them easier to find amid crash debris or on the bottom of the ocean. Needless to say, these devices are well protected with good safety meaures. For instance, they have been equipped with self-activated ultrasonic beams that broadcast the boxs position underwater for up to 30 days. Today, most black boxes, majority of which are being manufactured by L-3 Aviation Recorders, in Sarasota, Fla., are capable of recording more than 250 types of digital data, or parameters, per second, and store them all for 25 hours before writing over them. In addition, the latest models of black boxes can also store 180 minutes worth of conversation, as compared to the 30-minute recording capacity of its earlier counterparts. Both kinds of data are stored in stacked semiconductor dynamic RAM memory boards. The information recorded, the sampling rate, and the order in which the data are stored differ from each black box.The hardwares and softwares needed to read and analyze the data from a black box are provided by the manufacturers. At times, the manufacturers even send a representative from the company to facilitate the analysis and interpretation of data from a black box.They may have their work cut out for them if the box is dented, twisted under high heat, or has damaged cable interfaces. In such cases, they must rebuild the interfaces or find other ways to extract data from the wreckage. If the box is damaged, it can take weeks or months to retrieve the information. Modern black boxes record up to three hundred factors of flight including: 1. Airspeed and altitude 2. Heading and vertical acceleration 3. Aircraft pitch 4. Cockpit conversations 5. Radio communications Scenario 1 The first scenario will be sending fines to police stations when drivers who own the vehicle, exceed driving speed limit which totally depends on the programmed capabilities of the black box to identify it. Interestingly, this idea is completed by having a part in the black box that has a receiver and sender elements. The receiver would have the ability to receive any kind of information from the police station such as the speed limit on the roads, among others. Moreover, there would be the sender element too, which has the ability to send the fines to the driver owing to any mistake against the Traffic Systems. Hence, the black box would be able to show any kind of information from police stations to drivers. When the driver exceeds the speed limit, the black box can send a warning to the driver. But in the event that the driver does not slow down the speed within one-hundred seconds, the black box would immediately send an information to police stations regarding the overspeeding . Furthermore, drivers could be informed that they have got a fine in that moment, and if they will still not slow down under the speed limit, then that would result in an increasing cost of the fine. The black box Speed indicatorin the car Police station Problems As we know,there is nothing in our world that is totally error- free or glitch- free, including computers and black boxes. While I was thinking about this product, I have realized one problem that might arise. If someone stole a car which was identified by the black box to have exceeded the speed limit, then the owner of the car will be the one who will be fined because the car was registered under his name. In this case, it would not be possible to determine who was driving the car while the overspeeding occurred. Another problem is that if someone is trying to take off the black box in order to cut the connection or the process between their cars and the police station. This can become a huge dilemma since cars without black boxes could do whatever they want such as overspeeding in the streets, without being detected by the police. Solutions: The solution of the first problem is to install a hidden camera in front of the drivers seat that has the ability to scan the drivers face. If the face that it scanned is not identical to the face of the driver, then the black box would send this information to both the police station and the owner of the car. This way, the carnapper will be caught and at the same time, his speed limit will be monitored.This camera, which resembles a form of security for the car, will record all the events that have happened while the driver is driving his/her car. Moreover, it is suggested that the owner of the car have the authorized people scanned by the security camera so that the black box would allow them to drive and it would not send any notification to the police station. Meanwhile, the solution to the second problem is to advocate the use materials that stongly adhere to the body of the vehicles. This will make the area around the black box really strong, reducing the possibility that it will be detached.Therefore, an emergency security which is built by a circuit that is connected by a separated battery in the black box will be installed in order to record the last event when somebody try to take off the black box. Then, the security device will send all the last information to the police station, just in case that there is someone who could take off the black box. Scenario 2 : In relation to the first scenario, the second one is about not letting the car turned on if there’s anything not safe in the car or even around it. This innovation could be accomplished by some sensors in every part of the car which provide inputs to the black box. Specifically, the temperature sensor will be used in this innovation since it could detect the presence of live beings, animals and humans alike, by the heat signal that they emit. Furthermore, a metal sensor will also be used to check if there is anything that could harm the car such as nails. There are other sensors that can be incorporated into this technology in order to identity if there are vehicular parts not properly working or not in good condition that may harm the driver when he/she turns on the engine. An example of how this innovation works is when the driver wants to turn on the car. The black box would take any warring address from the inputs such as a nail in front of the car or if there’s a child under it. Also it is going to check if the driver has done all the security meaures such as wearing the seat belt. In other words, when the black box concluded that the driver and the car are in a safe area, then the driver would be allowed to turn on the car. Problem : The problem in this scenario is a little bit complicated. It is about the seat belt where there are surely a lot of people who like to act smarter than the black box. What they could do is to take off the seat belt after the black box checks that everything is safe and after they have started to drive on the road. In this condition, the black box would not notice that the driver is driving without the seat belt. Also, we cannot let the black box make an immediate order to stop working the car because it could cause a huge accident on the road. This could make that innovation useless. Solution : There are two possible ways to solve the issue of taking off the seat belt while driving on the road.The first solution is to create a safe security system which locks the seat belt as long as the driver is driving the car on the road and it would not be released until the driver stopped the car in the parking. Moreover, the black box would make the seat belt unlock in any possible dangerous situation like an accident. Another solution is to program the black box to send a warning to the driver to put back the seatbelt when he takes it off while driving. In case the driver ignored this order, then the black box would give them 100 seconds to put on the seatbelt. If the user of the car still ignored that order, the black box would finally send a fine to the police station. Both of these solutions will not work in any case of accident. Scenario 3: The third scenario is about sending the location of the car to the police station in cases of road accidents, regardless of the place where it happened. This idea works by programming the black box to send a report consisting of the place of accident and how it occurred. This objective could be accomplished by putting cameras in the sides of the car to provide inputs to the black box (front, back, left and right). Furthermore, the black box would report which part of the car is damaged. Hence, this innovation could give the police station all the details of the accident. Hopefully, they could fix the damage that happened easily. Problem : In this scenario, there can be a huge problem when the driver is hurt badly as a result of the accident or when the driver has a life-threatening injury. In this case, this innovation could have no advantage and the driver may suffer from his/her wounds. As a result, the cops would not give any help. When the cops arrive in order to respond to the situation, they would be forced to face the injures of the driver but they do not have anything to help them. All what they could do is to report the accident. Solution : The solution to this problem is to install a camera and some sensors in order to detect if the driver has sustained injuries or not. In that case, if the black box says that the driver has injures, it would not just send the report to the police station, but also it would report that situation to the nearest hospital. Moreover, it would send them an order to bring an ambulance in the location of the accident. As a result the driver could be healed from the wounds. Read More