Safety systems identification

[Mark Rabdau]

Mr Moore and all,
I have a lot to catch up on all of this as I'm new to this forum, but I would like to throw an idea out to the group here.
There has been discussion and thoughts on a sticker process to identify the safety systems found on each vehicle...what if we looked into putting the info (such as found in Holmatro's "Rescuer's Guide to Vehicle Safety Systems" in a device such as a Palm Pilot or similar...Make it yellow or orange, connect the pen with a wire so it won't get lost and do the grant thing to make them available to each department. another idea is the bar code scanner concept - but that would require the automotive industry to make the stickers for each vehicle. I would appreciate any feed back on this/these ideas.

[MetalMedic]

Mark, welcome aboard! You're going to love it here. There is a great deal of knowledge in the people posting here and I have found them to be most helpful!

I like your concept and it deserves some discussion. Some potential problems I see would be the massive amount of work it would take to keep the devices up-to-date. Today we see changes in vehicles not just from year to year, but even throughout the year. The model 2001 vehicle produced in September 2000 may not be identical to the same vehicle produced in July 2001. While there may be a subtle changes, they could be to things that make a big difference in a rescue situation. For that reason, I would suspect no company would want to assume the liability for maintaining such a system with our current technology. Perhaps it is not too far away where such a "Palm Pilot" device could be hooked into cellular technology to allow constant updates from the manufacturer... so it is something we might see in our lifetimes.

As for stickers and bar codes. The concern I would have there is Murphy's Law. Just as sure as the manufacturers affix them to a vehicle. The location of the sticker or bar code would be directly under the other vehicle that landed on top of the one you need to perform the extrication from. Of course, here again, we are not far from having transponders on all cars that could send this information via radio signal to our computers. So here again, I would not be surprised to see this technology coming to us in our life times.



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Richard Nester
Orrville (OH) Fire Dept.