How to avoid road accidents on U-turn in mountainous area?

Where there is a U-turn either on a ground level road or in mountainous area, the place becomes prone to accidents, particularly if the speed of vehicles is more, or non-signaling of horn and/light while taking the U-turn.

However, such possible road accidents can be avoided using following setup. The suggested arrangement is shown below. Read the following explanation also to understand the exact logic behind it.

Suggested arrangement

Understanding the setup

Here one u-turn in a mountainous area is shown in above figure. There are two RED POSTS fixed at the end points of u-turn area. Suppose there is valley on outer side of this road and mountain is in inner side of the road. Two vehicles (say two cars, A & B), are approaching towards the u-turn.

Logical conditions to use

• Suppose car-A and car-B are coming towards the u-turn. Both of the them are not aware about each other, since there is mountain in between them.
• So we shall use a sensor on each side of the mountain to detect the passing car. When car-A passes over the sensor-A it detects it will detect it and it will switch ON the red light of RED POST-1 for some time (with a specific delay).
• So the car-B will get the warning to slow down. Also below the RED POST-1 there will be a warning message –
• “ALERT! Another vehicle is coming from opposite side”

• Now as car-B passes over the sensor-B, the red light of RED POST-2 will light up giving the same type of warning message to car-A.
• So both vehicles should slow down and then will carefully cross each other over the U-turn, avoiding the accident.

Possible problems in designing the project

Well the above logical conditions appear to be simple. But what will happen in following random conditions?

1. Once both cars cross each other over the u-turn, they then pass over the sensors A & B again.
2. Due to this again the two red lights will turn ON giving false or useless alarm which must be avoided.
3. What will happen if any one car (or even both cars) stops (due to whatever reason) after crossing either the sensor-A or the sensor-B?
4. What will happen if a car passes over the sensor and then without crossing the u-turn, it turns back?

I think all these problems must be considered before designing the project. I have given this task to the students of robotics learning under Vidyasagar Academy and one of my students “Shreyas Chandak” already worked on it, submitted such project in NIF (National Innovation Foundation) and stood at 6th rank on India level. If you want you can start discussion on this topic in below given comments section. Those who directly want this project as a ready made project for college submission etc. can contact me. Of course, I have worked on it covering all possible problems in the project.

– Dattaraj Vidyasagar

Suggestions to students

1. Consider using simple microcontroller ATMega8 for this project.
2. Using either ultrasonic sensors will be more reliable than any other sensors.
3. If cost is not the issue, you can also use motion detector replacing US sensors.
4. If you use two sensors to detect each car, i.e. 4 sensors in a single project, you will be able to detect the direction of car passing over the sensors.

You can use the development board of your robotics kit for this project. No need to purchase any other circuit for it. Isn’t it a good thing? Now to detect two cars you will require two such development board and program them to carry out this task. For that make a group of your robotic friends and share your kits.

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