The recent accident in Glasgow involving a run-away bin lorry set me thinking.
Railway locomotives and many other machines have a ‘dead man’s handle’, a device that stops the machine if the driver or operator is suddenly incapacitated, for example by a heart attack.
Usually it’s something like a handle or button which the driver has to keep his hand on all the time. It applies the brakes automatically if the driver leaves go.
Why should road vehicles not have something similar?
Of course, it would not be practicable to expect car/lorry/bus drivers to keep hold of a handle all the time, but there surely must be be a way to detect automatically if a driver is suddenly incapacitated.
Normally a driver’s right foot is always on either the brake or accelerator, so perhaps a device could detect if there was no pressure on either for more than a few seconds, and then apply the brake automatically.
It would not be 100 per cent foolproof, since there is no guarantee that such an incapacitated driver’s foot would always slip off the pedals – but it would work in most such cases, and so prevent the majority of similar accidents.
ADT Fryer Terncliff Covingham Swindon
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