A system to help drivers when slipping on ice, sleet, snow, or rain

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A system to help drivers when slipping on ice, sleet, snow, or rain (3/25/05)

My commute
I live at the green point, and work at the red point.

I drive a lot. More than most folks. About 100 miles a day, actually. Over two hours. Why? Well, there's a girl, and yes she's worth it. But that's not the point. The point is, I'm surrounded by cars and roads for a large part of my day, and so I get a lot of time to think about those things. One of these days I'll type up a rant on the poor on and off ramps on 128 near Boston, but for now I wanted to share an idea I got shortly after hydroplaning along a bridge on 295, near Providence.

A good number of roadway accidents seem to be caused by folks who are hydroplaning or have lost control of their vehicles due to snow, sleet, or ice. In the winter we use sand to establish traction for a vehicle stuck in a snow bank, so it can drive out of the snow bank. Why not use the same idea to help a driver regain control of the vehicle and avoid hitting something? With today's technologies, especially the airbag technologies, we should be able to put together a system that could:

sense when a vehicle has gone out of control by comparing independent sensor data with steering and motion data from OBDII data,
issue a command to a device that could discharge the sand, and
discharge the sand.

The system would need three components:

Independent Motion Sensor Assembly (IMSA): I'd used some specially designed mercury switches here but there has got to be a better (and less toxic) way. The gist of this is just that it needs to get data on which way the car is headed to the . . .
ETS Controller (ETSC): A small computer powered by the vehicle's battery that reads in the motion data from the IMSA and compares it with data from the OBD II system present in most passenger vehicles these days. The OBD II data knows which way the driver has the steering wheel turned and if they are breaking or accelerating. If the ETSC senses a disparity in the two data inputs it figures the vehicle must be sliding and triggers . . .
Traction Discharge Unit (TDU): one over each front wheel, the TDU has a loose particulate in it that'll flow easily and create traction for the wheel to work with. Sand ought to work great although alternatives could be found. At the top of the TDU is a chamber where either gas or hydrogen (got to remember the new economy here) can be ignited via a spark plug. The resultant controlled-explosion would "push" the sand down through a small trap into the Particulate Arrestor, whose soul function is to ensure the sand doesn't come out in one huge bit but instead trickles out over a few seconds, providing the driver with enough sustained traction to regain vehicle control.

Such a system would be relatively easy to create and maintain. If it discharges the particulate could be bio-safe and relatively cheap to refill, and the top of the units could be in the engine compartment, allowing it to be refilled through a similar system as is used for the windshield washer fluid or oil. This would make maintenance easy.