Australian youth is Google Science Fair finalist

Oh this is very cool. 14-year old Viney Kumar has been selected one of 15 global finalists in this year’s Google Science Fair. That’s global finalists and a seriously impressive achievement.

Kumar’s project  looks for new ways to provide drivers with more notice when an emergency vehicle is approaching, so they can can take evasive action to get out of the emergency vehicle’s way.

After seeing emergency vehicles stuck in traffic jams Kumar built a smartphone application that provides an early-warning graphic as well as a spoken notification on hands-free mobile phones when an emergency vehicle is within 800 metres of the target car. He has called his project PART (Police and Ambulance Regulating Traffic Program). Kumar conducted repeated trials of his new app and found that his PART system provides drivers with an average of 67 seconds reaction time when an emergency vehicle is approaching. When compared against the published siren reaction times of between 7 and 14 seconds, his results shows that his new app could give drivers up to eight times longer to move out of the way for emergency vehicles.

There are 15 global finalists in the Science Fair competition and they’ll be going to Google headquarters in Mountain View on September 23 to present their projects to an international panel of scientists for the final round of judging.

The Google Science Fair site has all the details on Kumar and the other 14 finalists. What an extraordinary group. There is hope for the World after all.

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