The students of SCMS School of Engineering and Technology developed an ‘Emergency Response System’ during the Kerala Road Safety Hackathon which was held in association with AXA insurance and World Bank at Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram.
They were the runner up for the Best Hardware Solution with a prize money of `95,000. Mithun Harikumar Nair, Sidarth Nair and Biyas Mohammed Basheer, the final year students of Computer Science BTech created a compact device which actively measures the tilt and position of the bike and this instrument can be placed inside the vehicle.
Once the sensor experiences a tilt above the threshold value(around 60 degrees from ground), a message is sent to the rider alerting him to check whether the fall is authentic and if or not a distress message is required (not required for minor cases) to be sent. If the fall is not due to any accident, the biker can reply to the sms message with a ‘no’, and the procedure gets cancelled.
Not replying to the message lets the system consider the fall as a serious accident and a message is sent to the centralised helpline number along with the GPS coordinates of the bike.
Other details such as vehicle registration number and blood group of the biker can also be sent. The message can also be sent to friends or any other person related to the rider.
This system reduces the time taken to provide post- emergency care. Due to this early alert, the hospital can attend to the injured faster. It also helps the emergency team to come prepared to handle the situation and hence, increasing the probability of survival.
This system is especially useful to report accidents which occur during night and also in remote areas where there are no third parties to help the victim.
Further, the system has no interface that the user needs to be aware of. The whole system is completely automated.
The device can be implemented in all bikes in lieu with the Road Transport Authority(RTA) of the state or through the bike manufacturer. The device is cheap and simple to use.