Communications: electrical – Land vehicle alarms or indicators – External alarm or indicator of movement
Reexamination Certificate
2001-09-28
2003-07-29
Wu, Daniel J. (Department: 2632)
Communications: electrical
Land vehicle alarms or indicators
External alarm or indicator of movement
C340S463000, C340S471000, C340S479000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06600415
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF INVENTION
The invention relates to a vehicle safe traveling alarm device, and particularly, to a transducer and a signal control circuit for an emergency-deceleration condition, and an emergency brake lamp using said transducer and signal control circuit.
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION
At present, deceleration alarm signals of all automobiles in the world are produced artificially by the driver's brake action. Since it is impossible to identify whether normal deceleration or emergency brake signals are indicated by the tail lamps, an accident of vehicle striking from behind is extremely liable to occur, or even a chain of vehicle striking accidents are caused.
In general cases, drivers do not activate emergency brakes purposelessly unless they are at a critical moment or in a last resort. However, unexpected events, particularly mechanical troubles, such as tire sudden explosion, engine rotating section damage and blocking etc., involuntarily occur to drivers. Since such events are not caused artificially, emergency breaking down occurs without starting the brake tail lamps, and likely causes accidents of vehicle striking from behind. Particularly for expressways, once accidents of vehicle striking from behind occur due to unexpected events, the drivers must be injured, suffer shock, or even be killed without issuing accident signals. At this time, if the other drivers following do not attentively focus on driving or there is a poor visibility, further striking accidents would be resulted, or even similar accidents cyclically occur like chain actions.
On Nov. 29, 1991, a chain of serious vehicle striking accidents occurred in California, US, 17 people were killed and 157 injured. On Nov. 6, 1990, many vehicles collided in Holland, 10 people were killed and dozens injured. On Feb. 27, 1991, more than 100 vehicles collided in France, 4 people were killed, and 20 injured and 12 seriously injured. And also in France, above 140 vehicles had collided before, and heavy casualties suffered. On Nov. 31, 1991, about 80 vehicles collided in California, US, 12 people were killed and many injured. And also in California, US, three accidents occurred on Jan. 15, 1994, in which above 60 vehicles collided, 2 people were killed, and above 50 injured. On Feb. 27, 1991, above 100 vehicles collided in Belgium, 23 people were injured and 2 killed. On Feb. 26, 1998, above 140 vehicles collided on Beinjing-Tianxin-Tangshan expressway in China, and traffic was interrupted seriously. On Mar. 10, 1998, 98 vehicles collided on expressway No. 31 in the North of France, 53 people were injured, and 8 seriously injured. In addition, serious vehicle accidents have occurred also in following countries: Italy, Britain, former Soviet Union, Japan, Germany, and nearly all developed or developing countries. Among them, Italy's most serious accident occurred on Feb. 10, 1993, in which several hundreds vehicles collided, 8 people were killed, the injured and seriously injured were up to 107, serious economic losses were caused, and traffic was blocked for a long time. On the day before, also in Italy, a similar serious event occurred, in which 5 people were killed, and above 100 injured. In China, only in Henan Province, 13317 road traffic accidents occurred in 1997, and 3513 people were killed, which means that every day 37 accidents would occur, 10 people were killed, and 28 injured, among them the accidents of vehicle striking from behind occupying a considerable proportion, published by “Da He (great river) Daily”, on Mar. 13, 1998.
It is illustrated from above instances and references that whether expressways or roads, heavy or light accidents of vehicle striking from behind occur sometimes, less as two or three vehicles, more as several hundreds vehicles.
Such serious results are caused by following reasons, the first reason is: the following drivers are warned only by artificially manipulating the brake tail lamps, which can not satisfy the need of modern vehicle traveling, but the actual effects of such brake tail lamps are over-believed.
Second, such brake tail lamps can not tell normal deceleration from emergency brake, and the following drivers would realize the risks too late.
Third, the warning effects of such brake tail lamps are not ideal, particularly when there is a poor visibility or the driver do not attentively focus on driving; and measures can not taken in time even finding the risk quickly.
Therefore, governments have stipulated that for any breaking down vehicles on the way, a warning or sign board must be set about one hundred meter away from their parking site so as to prevent a serious accident from occurring. However, such action needs a long preparing and carrying out process. It is obvious that there is no time to respond the accident on a heavy traffic expressway, and in this case, following collision would occur in several seconds or dozens of seconds.
Therefore, in Japan, a safe airbag is designed for and added to the steering wheel in cooperation with a safe belt in order to reduce the effects of the vehicle collision on the personnel. But the fact is that only the drivers are protected in a certain degree and that for passenger, particularly for vehicles themselves, there is little significance. Particularly for the earlier collided vehicle and the passenger in it, any effective result and protection are not obtained, and the earlier collided vehicle in turns become another collision target. Thus, it is obvious that such airbag is not the best means to solve the collision problem, and the active method to remedy and control the situation.
In order to solve the vehicle collision problem, scientists in various countries have made attempts to prevent collision by a method in which an active brake is performed with a distance-measuring radar using ultrasonic wave, infrared ray, electromagnetic wave, laser etc. But that method needs expensive instruments mounted (proportional to performance). Furthermore, that method requires to improve and add complex electronic brake devices, and its fatal disadvantage is that traffic accidents are more liable to be caused (a near-distance dodging of flying birds, insects, bats, tree leaves, and falling paper sheets can result in strange emergency braking), and that groundless troubles are brought, or even a chain collisions are caused. Therefore, such envisage and scheme has remained in test stage and no substantial progress is made since the appearance of expressway.
SUMMARY OF INVENTION
An object of the invention is to provide an emergency-deceleration condition transducer, which can detect vehicle traveling conditions, such as normal traveling, emergency-deceleration, vehicle collision, or even an overturn accident.
Another object of the invention is to provide a signal control circuit which is used cooperatively with the emergency-deceleration transducer.
A further object of the invention is to provide an emergency brake lamp which can automatically detect vehicle traveling conditions and issues effectively a corresponding warning signal when vehicle emergency-deceleration or vehicle collision or even overturn accidents occurs.
In order to achieve the objects described above, the invention provides a emergency-deceleration condition transducer including an insulate house made of an insulate material, in which a close hollow arc groove is formed, said arc groove having an arc surface; some mercury is injected into said arc groove and changing with the vehicle traveling speed, said mercury in the arc groove would freely move backwards and forwards along the arc surface; a plurality of metal contacts are provided on the said arc surface and led outside of said housing as leading out electrodes, the adjacent metal contacts are turned on and off successively when the mercury moves from one end contact to the other.
The length of the arc groove of the emergency-deceleration condition transducer described above is about 8-35 times of the length of the mercury along the longitudinal direction of the arc groove, and preferably 13 times.
The
Li Jiekui
Tang Son
Wu Daniel J.
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