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posted by on Friday January 20 2017, @02:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the 15-seconds-of-siren dept.

Ambulances in Stockholm are testing a system that interrupts in-car audio systems to warn drivers that they need to get through.

The solution was developed by students at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in the city. It broadcasts a voice warning, while a text message also appears in the radio display. It uses an FM radio signal to jam drivers' speakers and stop music playing. It will only be able to alert cars that have their radios turned on. It can also interrupt CDs and music connected via Bluetooth.

[...] "Often drivers have only a few seconds to react and give way to emergency vehicles," said Mikael Erneberg, a KTH student who worked on the system. "The optimal warning time is at least 10 to 15 seconds."

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by gidds on Friday January 20 2017, @05:03PM

    by gidds (589) on Friday January 20 2017, @05:03PM (#456600)

    There's no mention in TFA of the signal being at all directional.  If it's not, then anyone within a few hundred metres or whatever (who is listening to a radio with RDS enabled) will hear the message.

    That would probably include far more drivers not in the path of the emergency vehicle than ones which are.

    People are naturally fairly forgiving of the needs of the emergency services, but it might not take that long for people to get used to hearing the signal and associate it with not having to take any action — and if it happens often enough, having your listening disrupted for no good reason could grow to be quite annoying.

    If they end up training people to ignore those messages — or, even worse, to disable RDS on their radios and miss out on useful announcements too — then this could be highly counterproductive.

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  • (Score: 1) by NewNic on Friday January 20 2017, @07:18PM

    by NewNic (6420) on Friday January 20 2017, @07:18PM (#456659) Journal

    If they end up training people to ignore those messages — or, even worse, to disable RDS on their radios and miss out on useful announcements too — then this could be highly counterproductive.

    Like lots of people (myself included) who turned off receiving most of the alert messages after the Amber alert message system was misused?

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    lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory