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14-Year-Old Genius Solves Blind Spots
Using some relatively inexpensive and readily available technology you can find at any well-stocked electronics store, Alaina Gassler, a 14-year-old inventor from West Grove, Pennsylvania, came up with a clever way to eliminate the blind spot created by the thick pillars on the side of a car's windshield.
Gassler's actually too young to have a driver's license in most states and has never experienced the frustration of trying to see around those pillars while driving, but that didn't stop her from tackling a problem that automakers have largely ignored. Her solution involves installing an outward-facing webcam on the outside of a vehicle's windshield pillar, and then projecting a live feed from that camera onto the inside of that pillar. Custom 3D-printed parts allowed her to perfectly align the projected image so that it seamlessly blends with what a driver sees through the passenger window and the windshield, essentially making the pillar invisible.
Her invention was part of a project called "Improving Automobile Safety by Removing Blind Spots," which Gassler presented at this year's Society for Science and the Public's Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology, and Engineering for Rising Stars) science and engineering competition. (It's basically a next-level science fair minus the cheesy papier-mâché volcanoes.) Her ingenuity was enough to earn her the competition's top honor, the Samueli Foundation Prize, which also netted Gassler $25,000.
A YouTube video of this invention in use is available.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @04:30AM (12 children)
If nothing else, it highlights these ridiculous fat A-pillars that car designers have foisted on the public.
Or, you know, you could design the car with a thin A-pillar. Current ultra high strength steels are strong enough to pass the roll-over test with a reasonable width pillar. The fancy material isn't all that much more expensive than lower strength steel.
Personally, I'd prefer the version that didn't depend on electronics.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @04:58AM (3 children)
The fat A-pillars are for holding airbags.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @06:36AM (1 child)
and the air-bags are needed - because of accidents caused by fat A-pillars. This is called "The American way to road safety".
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @07:29AM
According to the statistics, the most common accidents are single-vehicle accidents, of which the vast majority are running off the road or hitting an obstacle in the roadway (e.g. debris, animals, etc.). The second most common is rear-end collisions, where a vehicle runs into a slower vehicle from behind. The third is being T-boned while turning at an intersection due to the other driver failure to follow a signaling device. The fourth is being T-boned at an intersection due to the turning car's failure to yield or follow a signaling device. The fifth is being T-boned while turning onto a major street from an uncontrolled entry due to improper yielding by the turning driver.
Note that only one of the top five would the A pillar even come into play in terms of causing an accident, and even then in most instances it would be obstructive only after an accident is inevitable anyway. But also note that in three of the top five, and possibly one additional one depending what happens after you leave the road (e.g. rollover), the airbag in the A pillar would drastically reduce the damage to the occupants from smashing into the side of the car.
So no, the air-bags are not needed to offset the accidents caused by thicker A pillars.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday November 03 2019, @03:33PM
Old cars with more upright windshields had narrow pillars that aren't obstructive. When you have a low, swoopy windshield you need more material to support the roof and you may want to move the door hinges back to avoid having a stupidly long door, leaving more dead space between the windshield and side window.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 03 2019, @05:09AM (1 child)
Citations needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04 2019, @02:29AM
I'm the AC that started this subject. You want a citation, here's one, bulk steel prices - https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/ultra-high-strength-steel.html [alibaba.com] Plenty of hits to choose from with a simple search.
Costs for a variety of different alloys seem to be from $450 - $800 per ton. Some of the coils on that page are just cold rolled, others fancy alloys that gain strength in forming.
To change a few critical areas of a car body-in-white from low/medium strength steel to a much stronger alloy is not a big deal in cost.
To the other comments on airbags -- have you noticed how steering wheel airbags have shrunk over the years? A-pillar airbags are also shrinking to match what can be built with good steel (and still pass the rollover test requirement).
(Score: 4, Disagree) by coolgopher on Sunday November 03 2019, @05:40AM
I was driving my dad's old Volvo 245 wagon some time ago. It was amazing. You can see EVERYTHING in all directions! Okay, it might not do quite as well in a roll test, but you know, the odds are a lot lower that I'll ever manage to roll a car than that I'll fail to see something because of obscuring pillars.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @06:17AM
Yeah right. They will do the cheapest they can get away with. I've had bean counters bitch because BOMs for products came in too high and their suggested solution was to trim a couple pennies off each part to take a few dollars of the BOM to get their magic number. In one case, we rework it a bit, but it is still too high. They suggest changing the main power transistors, main caps to something cheaper (the only pieces we didn't reduce the cost of, IIRC) and reducing the heat sinks for them. When we pointed out that would increase their risk of failure by a certain percentage and shorten the life. They crunched the numbers and said to do it because they'd likely fail after their "life" is up and they could get insurance in case something going really wrong during the warranty period.
TL;DR if bean counters are willing to ask you to risk complete failure of a product over a couple of cents, imagine what they'd risk to save hundreds of dollars per product.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03 2019, @06:50AM (3 children)
Good visibility in a car HAS to have a lot of value as a preventitive to accidents. Personally, I would choose decent glass all around like I have in my 2008 car over the tank-like, limited visibility of new cars. You simply can't see well. Don't tell me that a car made as little as 11 years ago is unsafe, either. Alas, the government doesn't give the customer any choice. Thus, we are condemned to drive bulbous, heavy tanks with weak acceleration (to save gas!) and thousands of dollars of mandatory safety crap that is unnecessary. I really hate all new cars. They feel like a PC that is bogged down with an intrusive, company-mandated anti-virus that kicks in every hour when you are just trying to get work done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04 2019, @02:34AM (2 children)
I've got a few older cars with good visibility and I'm planning to keep them. So I understand where you are coming from on visibility.
However, it's plain not true to say "weak acceleration" -- some of the quickest accelerating cars ever build are on the market now. Many of the new small motors with integrated turbocharging have better power/weight ratios than the larger engines they replace.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04 2019, @12:01PM (1 child)
The acceleration on many new cars has been badly tuned in order to meet government fuel efficiency standards.
When using the accelerator in a normal fashion, you get lethargic acceleration. But, if you want actual power, you floor the thing and then the engine/transmission roars with power. The thing is, I don't want to drive that way. I just want smooth, quiet power delivered in a linear manner without having to floor it, not this binary weak/monster power curve.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:43AM
If anyone is still here, the industry calls this "tip-in" -- changing the effective "gearing" between the accelerator pedal and the power output (or throttle plate angle). Some companies liked to make the first bit of throttle pedal quickly open the throttle to 1/3 or so, this meant that with a light touch on the pedal, the car would surge forward and feel very "powerful" to the prospective buyer.
This might have been effective for selling cars, but it also makes the car hard to live with in normal driving, hard to accurately control the power at the low-power end of the engine capability.