Child safety on the road

When and how you can walk with children on the road? Pedestrians are the most vulnerable road users and this is doubly true of children. When a car hits a pedestrian at a speed of 30 km / h, an average of every 20 pedestrians dies, with a speed of 50 km / h, almost half of the impact will not survive. The encounter of a pedestrian with a car driving 60 km / h means almost certain death for him.

However, if a car collides with a child at any speed, it can always end tragically, at a speed of 30 km / h is already critical to the child. This is precisely why care should be taken to prevent the safety of children on the road, which also addressed in the amendment to the Road Traffic Act, which entered into force in January this year.

Among other things, the amendment to the Road Traffic Act also brought additional obligations for pedestrians on the roadside or the roadside. In poor visibility, they must wear reflective elements or safety clothing not only outside the village but also inside it. The law defines reduced visibility as visibility in which road users do not see each other sufficiently clearly, especially from dusk to dawn, at fog, snow, rain or in a tunnel.

Especially in municipalities that do not have sidewalks at the edge of roads, these preventive measures are taking place, as the risk of a pedestrian collision with a motor vehicle has increased significantly. If the pedestrian moving along the road is not wearing reflective elements, the distance that the driver can see is significantly reduced.

Proper clothing in road safety plays a very important role. Generally, if we dressed in dark colors, the driver of a motor vehicle us in the dark, they see from a distance of about 20 meters, but the reflective material shines up to 200 meters distance. This effect is even more pronounced in young children.

Clothing and accessories in bright fluorescent colors then greatly contribute to increased safety during the day. Visibility of pedestrians and especially children or cyclists can be increased not only by well-chosen clothing but also by various reflective elements, patches, and accessories made of special materials. Reflective material at night can be seen at three times greater distance than white clothing, and at more than ten times greater distance than dark clothing.

At a speed of 75 km / h, the driver needs at least 31 meters (about 1.5 seconds) to realize the danger and respond appropriately. Thus, pedestrians, cyclists and skaters will be given enough time with reflective materials or various elements.

REFLECTING ELEMENTS

By using reflective elements, pedestrians protect their health and life. So their standard equipment, especially in autumn or winter, should include a reflective vest, tape and various illumination on the hand, foot, hat or bike helmet reflective stickers.

Reflective elements for children include safety reflective vest or reflective vest worn on top clothes, ensures good visibility for at least 50 meters and serves to protect children when moving on the road, walking and overall outdoors. The reflective safety strap can be attached to a shoulder, leg or bag as it rolls itself and is suitable for children and adults. For school bag, rucksack or backpack it is possible to buy reflective cover of yellow color, which is well visible from long distance.

It is fastened with sewn rubber and rubber straps and is also ideal for hiking or cycling trips. Reflective elements already used by many manufacturers of clothing and school bags, which can be supplemented with the above-mentioned reflective vests, retractable straps, as well as caps and winter hats with reflective patches, reflective keys, pendants in the shape of various animals, etc.

Even shoes equipped with reflective elements as standard reflective elements should always be placed on moving parts of the body, ideally on the upper or lower limbs. To be sufficiently visible, they must not be overlapped by additional layers of clothing or carry baggage. Having reflective elements on your clothes is not an expensive thing or a disgrace.

The Prime Minister's response to the students

Students from Helena School attended Wednesday's event at Knistad Gerrard. They represent the future and were there to join Camilla Rickstrand's and Erik Lundgren's lecture series Skaraborg's Sessions. They got to mingle with many heavy names in the business.

Jacob Backhaus, Mathilda Hansson, Ella Regstorp, Noah Törnqvist, and Tilda Hellgren all attend the Helena School's advanced education in mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry.

In their spare time, they have competed as Team Dahlénium and been successful.

"We participate in the world's largest innovation and technology competition for young people," the students explain.

They competed for the first time in 2016 when they came second in the qualifiers. In 2017 they won the qualification and went on to the Scandinavian final in Oslo.

That went well and we will represent Sweden in Hungary in a kind of final where 50 countries and 70 teams participated.

Each year there is a new theme and last year was the theme "Problems that can arise between humans and animals" when the students made a reflective tape for cows.

It was after 40 cows had died in connection with a traffic accident outside Hjo and a fire truck drove straight into a cowherd. The driver of the fire truck had been blinded by an oncoming vehicle and the cows did not appear in the dark.

This was an easy solution to the problem since it is easy to attach to the animal's necklace.

One of the elements of the competition was to build an armored robot, it was programmed to solve various missions on a track under time pressure.

It has been crowned one of Sweden's best lego robots, says Jacob Backhaus.

A colorful police car caught the eye in Kuopio

On the streets of Kuopio on Tuesday, one could see a brighter and more colorful police car. Kuopio police are testing a new car this week, which should be available to police throughout the country early next year.

Field manager Mikko Antikainen says that a model of European police cars has been sought for the car and the reflective materials on its sides and rear.

Yellow is used elsewhere in Europe, although we have more moderate reflective materials than, for example, England.

Reflective material seeks safety, for example in traffic accidents. Motorists can detect the emergency vehicle further away, for example on the highway.

Most of the year is dark and, especially on motorways and highways, not everyone is quite enough, although there are emergency vehicles on the roadside. Also, the new car has yellow LEDs in the rear windows that can indicate the direction in which the car is to pass the accident site, Antikainen describes.

The new car attracted a lot of attention

There is an extra hatch on the side of the new police car, which allows you to put equipment on the opposite side of the door, for example. In the rear, the side windows have been removed and space has been made easier to clean.

Antikainen says that the police car received positive feedback on the first day and garnered attention on the streets of Kuopio.

Yes, it has caught my eye, but at least no one has started to laugh, Antikainen throws.

The new police car circles Finland for test use. After Kuopio, it moves elsewhere to Northern Savonia and then to Oulu. Experiences are collected from all areas. Existing blue-and-white police cars are due to be replaced with new, more colorful ones early next year.

"Visibility is super important"

Eight-year-old Urho Malinen is happy to run in the courtyard of the Salmela School in Sotkamo, wearing a new safety vest. He was one of the first to get his vest and he is proud of it.

This vest is great, of course, I'm going to wear it too. Reflective tapes make this great. Visibility is super important, otherwise, you can stay under the car.

Sami Mähönen, the chief of the attention-grabbing campaign, watches Urho go with a smile and says that this is where the work is just beginning.

Now you have to get your parents involved too because you can't leave the use of children's vests alone to the kindergarten and the school. The example of the home is the most crucial here.

Sami Mähönen has obtained money from companies for a total of 2,000 vests. The cost of making reflective jackets was 11,000 euros. The attention vest is distributed in schools and kindergartens to every child from 3 to 12 years old in Scotland.

The municipality promised to handle the distribution, and the Traffic Safety and Police will help with the training. Money for the vests was purchased from companies. It once happened that there were more paying companies coming in than there was even a need.

"It is not always a big idea to go far," Mähönen smiles. The idea came about when Mähönen checked the safety equipment of his daughter in Eskar.

Next up, Timo Määttä, a traffic safety instructor, reminds us that the whole attention vests campaign hit an important point.

On darker roads, only one in two walkers wears a reflector or a vest. Against this knowledge, it is good for homes to wake up to the need for visibility.

Traffic safety trainer Timo Määttä says frankly that without a clear model, the use of vests is quickly forgotten.

For the smallest, the vest can be worn, but if the model does not come home, the larger ones will leave the vest on the shelf.

The obligations that cyclists must observe

The advent of spring and the improvement of the weather conditions create the right conditions for the increasing use of bicycles. On this occasion, the police recalled the requirements for this group of road users.

The Road Traffic Law obliges cyclists to wear a reflective vest with reflective tape outside the settlements, during the dark part of the day and with reduced visibility, moving as close as possible to the right border of the lane.

Under the ATC, cyclists are required to use bicycles that are in good working order: brakes, bells, a device for emitting white or yellow well distinguishable light at the front and a red reflector at the rear, as well as white or yellow reflectors or reflective elements on the sides of the wheels. The law permits the placement of a red light-emitting device at the rear.

The rider is not allowed to move parallel to another two-wheeled vehicle, to operate the bicycle without holding the handlebars, and to release the pedals to control it, to operate the bicycle in pedestrian-only areas. On a pedestrian path, the cyclist is obliged to get off the bike and then cross to the other side, this prohibition does not apply to cyclists up to 12 years of age; move in or close to another road vehicle.

Traffic police are urging all road users to adhere strictly to road safety rules.

Grower harm mutant automated reflective color-fabric roller

As consumers growing buy apples by color, and as Michigan growers continue to shift to the fresh market, growers there have been experimenting more with reflective fabric to get light to fruit on the bottoms of trees.

Traditionally, the fabric is laid by hand in Michigan in what is a three-person job, but at least one grower family is working to automate the process — a task that hasn’t come without challenges.

Kyle Rasch's early attempts at an automated color-fabric roller involved a distributed trampoline. "It was not ideal," said Kyle, 25, a third-generation grower in Greenville, Michigan, northwest of Grand Rapids. "We could do only one row At a time, and it was a slow process, but it did the job."

The Ranches had seen a few custom-built pieces of equipment, but little on the market for the task. So, Kyle used the U-shaped leg from his wind-battered childhood trampoline as an axle to hold a roll of color reflective fabric like a paper towel roll holder in a kitchen.

He attached that to the hydraulic weed-spraying booms on the family’s tractor, along with a spring to hold it tight against the tree trunks. "We took some duct tape, some zip strips and made a little farmer apparatus," he said.

He and his family liked the results, so they worked with their equipment vendor, which manufactured two rollers that fasten to the sprayer booms, the arms of which fold up and extend to allow them to lay the fabric on both sides of the alley at once.

They prefer exposed ground in the middle of the alley to allow access for people and equipment.

 The family demonstrates the use of the rollers in July at the International Fruit Tree Association’s Summer Tour.

It's still a three-person job — one to drive the sprayer, the others to shovel small piles of dirt on the stretched fabric to hold it in place. They consider the rollers a cheap improvement to speed up the job — less than $1,000 for each Adapter that holds up to 40-inch rolls on each side.

Reflective material itself, common in Washington state, is pretty new in Michigan, said Phil Schwallier, a Michigan State University extension horticulturist.

Midwest sunlight is typically more diffuse to spread light more evenly, while up until 10 years ago, growers produced primary apples destined for the processing market, where color doesn’t matter.

These days, the climate has been changing to make color inconsistent, while growers have been converting to high-value fresh varieties like Honeycrisp and SweeTango.

Typically, in Michigan, growers lay strips only under the trees to leave access to the orchard alleys that get muddier than in Washington.

The machine speeds things up, but stretching foil by hand is a relatively easy chore, Schwallier said.

"It's not that bad," he said. Just thread a rope through the roll. One person pulls it and walks backward while two people shovel. That method covers only one row at a time, so the machine doubles the pace of work and Eases the stress on workers' backs.

Last year, they stretched fabric on about 5 acres and noticed packets increased 10 to 15 percent from those trees, said Tom Rasch, Kyle's father. "This is from the sun reflecting in and giving the fruit a Better background color," he said.

The reflection material also ripened their fruit more uniformly, allowing them to pick as much as 70 percent in the first pass.

"We're impressed with what we've seen so far," he said.

Studies elsewhere by the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission also have reflected reflective fabric to increase fruit size and yield.

This year, the Rasches are expanding to 15 or 20 acres of SweeTango, Honeycrisp and some of their harder-to-color Galas.

The Ranches advised growers to use caution with the fabric — put it out during a heatwave and you could sunburn the fruit on the bottom. Instead, they try to stretch on a relatively cool day to let the fruit build up a little sun tolerance before The hot weather arrives.

Tom Rasch next hopes to work with the equipment company to add a disc to furrow dirt on top of the fabric automatically, cutting down on labor even more.

The sole occupant of sunk fishing boat rescued after hours in the water

A man who was plucked out of the sea by French-side sea rescue service SNSM on Thursday night after his fishing vessel sank in the Anguilla channel is thankful to be alive after spending more than seven hours in the water hoping for rescue.

SNSM was informed by the surveillance center CROSS at 2:15 pm that the fishing vessel Integrity had sunk "around Anguilla" with one person on board. A crew of four SNSM volunteers on the semi-rigid inflatable Rescue Star headed for Anguilla, but initially without the Position of the sunken boat. A few cushions spotted in the water in the middle of the channel, but no evidence of a sinking boat.

It was learned the individual, identified as Kumakie Parris, had managed to alert a friend by phone at 11:15 am when his boat sank, and the friend then went out with his boat to look for him. It was only after 1:30 pm That the friend finally alerted the Anguilla fire department to launch the official emergency chain.

The Anguilla police had one last contact with the shipwrecked man around 1:45 pm, confirming that he was in the water and still alive, but without being able to specify his exact position.

Major resources were then deployed: the Dutch Coast Guard on two Metal Sharks, which took on board two police officers and some Anguillian firemen; the Gendarmerie's Nautical Brigade; private boats Funtime, Night Rider, and others; Rescue Star of SNSM St. Martin; As well as a DASH-8 aircraft which flew over the whole area making round trips.

Despite all the resources being deployed the missing man was still had not been located as night began to fall. Rescue Star re-fuelled at the Delta Petroleum dock and resumed the search with thermal binoculars, this time searching the area from Pointe Plum to Blowing Rock, from South to North.

Suddenly the man was spotted in the water in the beam of the flashlight and was hoisted on board. He is in good condition, with no visible wounds or injuries. CROSS was immediately informed at 7:40 pm that he had been found

Parris explained that his engine had broken down, then a big wave broke on his boat. At that time, about 11:15 am, he contacted his friend in Anguilla, put on a life jacket (a decision that saved his life) and tried to pump His boat to empty it, when another big wave hit him on the beam and the boat capsized.

"He saw boats looking for him; he shouted, raised his arms; the plane passed over him; but no one saw him," SNSM reported. "A small head between the waves is almost impossible to see. He had nothing to signal his whistle, no light, no reflective tape on his safety vest. His phone in a waterproof pocket no longer worked. He swam for hours trying to reach the coast of St. Martin.

"The crew gave him a phone to call his family who was ecstatic that he was alive."

SNSM particularly thanked sponsor Delta Petroleum, which came out to refuel the Rescue Star after closing time, permitting the search to be resumed and the man saved. SNSM also thanked CROSS, the Dutch Coast Guard, Brigade Nautique, DASH-8 plane, and all The private boats involved in this international maritime rescue collaboration for their efforts.

SNSM advises sea-goers to always wear a life vest, in water sports and, ideally, equip it with a light, a whistle, and reflective tapes to have the maximum chance of detection if the worst happens – because miracles like the one last night happen very, very rarely!