Wednesday, August 24, 2011
My other hand is a Mercedes
Most young boys, and men – and come to think of it some girls and many women too – would enjoy owning a Mercedes car.
One 14-year-old boy, however, has a Mercedes hand.We should probably explain…
The young boy in question was born without his left hand and part of his left forearm, and as a keen F1 fan he wrote to the boss of the F1 Mercedes (GP Petronas) asking if the company would pay around £30,000 for a state-of-the-art bionic hand for him if he agreed to have it branded with their logo, as you do.
Instead of a rejection letter from the powerful firm, the boy was told that, ‘yes’, Mercedes was happy to help.
It got together with Touch Bionics, a company which creates arguably the most advanced prosthetic limbs in the world, to make the lad an i-LIMB Pulse hand capable of gripping a pen, tying shoelaces and holding up a 14 stone weight!
Unsurprisingly the 14-year-old said, “It is just amazing. My old artificial hand had a pretty basic open-close mechanism similar to a clamp.
“But with this one I can do everything. It also looks really cool – the outer-shell is see-through so you can actually see the mechanics working. They are even going to put a little Mercedes badge by the wrist.
“I am actually looking forward to getting back to school so I can test it out.”
We’re sure the other boys will be envious!
Photo © epekopurnomo via photobucket
Labels: bionic, car, F1, hand, i-LIMB Pulse, Mercedes, Touch Bionics
Monday, August 15, 2011
Dad’s taxi, 80 years of service and counting
We’re all living longer. If your parents were born in the 1950s, chances are that they will now reach, or get very close to reaching their 80s and many may even reach their 90s – a far cry from life expectancy in the early part of last century, where reaching a half-century was considered for some a sign of venerable old-age.
Yet here we are in 2011. How things have changed, for example a baby girl born this year has a one-in-three chance of living to 100. In fact, according to the Office of National Statistics by 2066 there will be more than half a million people in the UK over the age of 100.
But how many of them will be drivers?
Recent figures show that there has been a 19% drop in 17 to 22-year-olds taking their driving test since 2005. The figure looks even more startling when you realise that is a drop of 200,000 drivers.And the chief reason for this fall?
Well, sadly its not improved public transport services but increases in the costs of motoring, particularly the price of young driver car insurance.
And this may not be a good thing for the drivers of the future. Not only is it harder to teach a new dog old tricks, but it’s also true that there is no substitute for experience. Simon Douglas, from the AA comments, "It doesn't matter what age you learn to drive, the longer you spend behind the wheel the better you'll be as a driver."
So perhaps we better hope that our parents live much longer than predicted, and for completely unsentimental reasons: without them we’ll be entirely reliant on the bus to get home, even when we’re using our OAP Freedom Pass.
Let’s keep our parents alive, we need the lift.
Photo © moonlightbulb via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: driving test, life expectancy, young driver car insurance
Friday, August 12, 2011
Summer holiday motion sickness
Are you one of the estimated 20 million people in the UK who suffer from motion sickness?
If the answer is yes and you’re dreading the journey you have to take to reach your holiday destination, then fear not.
Firstly, if you’re the driver, you’re unlikely to be affected by motion sickness anyway. Because you’ll be focused on the road, you just won’t have the chance to feel sick.
However, if you are a passenger, there are still ways of counteracting travel sickness.
The first is simply not thinking about it and distracting yourself with music, or a safe in-car game like eye-spy.
If this doesn’t work, sitting at the front of the car and pretending that you’re driving could help. A car journey can sometimes be less bumpy at the front, and having a large window to look out of can help your body feel more stable.
Still feeling queasy? Well close your eyes. This can help because you only feel motion sickness when what your eyes are seeing and what your inner ear is telling your brain don’t match up. Close your eyes and this should eliminate the cause of motion sickness.
If you still don’t feel well you could always open a window for some fresh air, take a break from journeying and sit on some solid ground or have a walk about to get your inner ear and eyes back in order, or use some motion sickness drugs to prevent the symptoms.
We hope this all helps and that you enjoy your holiday, wherever it may be, and if you don’t have a holiday planned you can always use these methods in day to day travel to make any trip more pleasant.
Photo © Darkstream via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: car, driver, holiday, journey, motion sickness, passenger, road, travel sickness
Monday, August 8, 2011
I’m not going on holiday this year, make no mistake
“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake,” is just one the many brilliant lines in cult classic Withnail & I. And although it might be a rather strange claim and statement of despair, it is, sadly, not an entirely unfamiliar situation for many young people.
With economic pressures such as low wages and high car insurance, we’re lucky if we arrive at any kind of holiday at all. Yes, Withnail and the authorial I might not have had heating, lighting, running water or any comforts of civilisation – and, yes, they had Withnail’s incorrigibly hot-breathed uncle to fight way, but at least they had a holiday, something increasing numbers of young people are finding it impossible to do.And what is it we can afford when we do? The answer is usually a damp cottage in rural Wales that we arrive to find already inhabited by hundreds of arachnid guests, or a cut-price holiday package in Egypt that leaves us with gastro-intestinal fireworks display and a finer knowledge of the alphabet of food poisoning, from E coli to Salmonella.
Truth be told, most of the time it’s just not worth it. That’s why this year, I’ve decided to have a holiday at home. London’s lovely and warm, so I’m going to take some time off and be a tourist in my own city. I’m going to tour the parks and explore the museums and have barbecues with friends. What’s more, I’ll save a couple of hundred pounds and reduce my carbon footprint in the process.
Photo © scalvert1978 via photobucket
Labels: car insurance, carbon footprint, holiday
Thursday, August 4, 2011
I think therefore I brake
When taking your theory and practical driving tests, you’ll probably have learnt that allowing yourself enough braking response time is quite important in order not to be involved in an accident.
Well, a scientist at the Berlin Institute for Technology called, Stefan Haufe, has been developing technology which could cut out the time taken between your brain thinking, “I need to brake”, and your leg actually doing it. He and his colleagues used 18 participants in their research, attaching electroencephalography (EEG) wires to each person’s head and sitting them in a driving simulator.
The people were told to keep driving at 100 kilometers an hour (62mph) while staying close to the computer controlled vehicle driving ahead of them. The car in front would brake without warning several times during the simulation, and the participants’ brain waves were measured as they reacted.
On average the EEG system successfully ‘predicted’ the person’s intention to brake 130 milliseconds before they physically did so.
Now Mr Haufe has stated that he and his fellow researchers are “considering to test the system online in a real car, however, if such a technology would ever enter a commercial product, it would certainly be used to complement other assistive technology to avoid the consequences of false alarms that could be both annoying and dangerous".
This sounds like a positive advance into reducing road traffic accidents, yet, if the automated vehicles Google has been testing become a reality first, then EEG braking will be obsolete before it ever became commercially available.
Let the technology race commence!
Photo © delta_avi_delta via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: brain, brake, driverless technology, driving test, EEG, practical, scientist, theory
Monday, August 1, 2011
Look, no hands!
You’d think that keeping both your hands on the steering wheel in order to stay in control of the car was just common sense. No, apparently not.
One 34-year-old driver from Norwich, who was driving along a 70mph duel carriageway, was stopped by police after being spotted steering his vehicle with his knees!
He was having a conversation on his mobile with one hand, and texting someone with a second mobile in the other.
He even made the police officer who’d pulled him over wait for him to finish his obviously very important chat, he wasn’t insured, and he didn’t bother to show up in court.
You may be pleased to know that he was nevertheless found guilty and is due to be sentenced in mid August.
Photo © ShuttrKing|KT via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: driver, driving, duel carriageway, mobile, police, steering wheel