MIchael Paine - DISCOVERIES

 

Some ideas and projects that i am pleased to be associated with...


Road Safety


  1. Bullet   1983 Managed the implementation of the NSW Heavy Vehicle Inspection Scheme - project planning, equipment acquisition, construction of 3 heavy vehicle inspection stations, staffing, rural logistics and phone bookings, financial projections... for annual roadworthiness inspections of trucks and buses

  2. Bullet   1994 Flashing warning lights on school buses need to be much brighter than conventional turn signals, which have very limited signal range on bright sunny days. The bright lights used on school buses in the USA are ideal for Australian conditions  (with Dr Alec Fisher)

  3. Bullet  1994 Assisting with CAPFA (now Kidsafe) Children in Car Crashes study (with Dr Michael Henderson)

  4. Bullet   1995 Rollover crashes are chaotic events with multiple opportunities for injury. The physics of these crashes are interesting (with Dr Michael Henderson)

  5. Bullet    1996 Devices to assist drivers keep to speed limits have enormous potential to reduce the road toll - see also Speed Control.

  6. Bullet    2000 When reversing, all types of motor vehicles (not just 4WD) pose a hazard to small children - a camera might reduce the risk (with Dr Michael Henderson)

  7. Bullet   2003 Protecting Children in Car Crashes: the Australian Experience - ESV paper with colleagues

  8. Bullet    2003 Daytime running lights, using dedicated LED lights, are worthwhile in Australia and are much more effective than low beam headlights

  9. Bullet    2005 Motorcycles should have bright yellow front turn signals as daytime running lights - these would uniquely identify motorcycles to other motorists and would not take any more precious space at the front of the motorcycle

  10. Bullet    2005 Many young driver fatalities would be prevented if they drove safer vehicles - confirmed in 2009 in this MUARC report

  11. Bullet    2005 Electronic stability control (ESC) has proven benefits but setting standards for ESC will be difficult

  12. Bullet    2005 Three-point seat belts on coaches - successful in Australia (with Michael Griffiths & Renae Moore) + Retrofitted bus seat belts must provide the same high protection as those on new buses (with Michael Griffiths and Bill Bailey). Since 1994 Australian long-distance coaches have had all seats with integrated 3 point seats belts. These seats weigh less than the typical European or US seat but can withstand 20g crash loads - typical of a high speed bus crash.

  13. Bullet    2006 A ride height line would simply the selection of appropriate child restraints for children +  Australian regulations should be based on child age (with Michael Griffiths, Julie Brown, Lynne Bilston and Robert Anderson)

  14. Bullet   2009 Contributed to RTA (now Transport NSW) oral history of road safety: Towards a safer system – Innovations in Australian road safety .

  15. Bullet 2011 Alternative motorised vehicles that look like cars should protect the occupants as well as those of modern cars (they should meet crash test regulations).  Small motorised vehicles such as power-assisted bicycles should be speed-limited instead of power limited. Speed settings should be based on infrastructure and other users. Motorised vehicles intended for footpath use , like mobility scooters, must be capable of extremely low speed travel and manoeuvring (which bicycles are not).

  16. Bullet 2011 Extra safety precautions when crash-testing electric vehicles - an incident is highly unlikely but some precautions and preparations are needed.

  17. Bullet 2012  Potential benefits of forward collision avoidance technology - assisted CASR with analysis of autonomous emergency braking 

  18. Bullet 2012 Pay-How-You-Drive Insurance - Road Safety Benefits

  19. Bullet 2013 After-market speed limit advisory systems - low cost, highly cost-effective technology using smartphones or sat-navs + Euro NCAP protocol for speed assistance systems (with Euro NCAP colleagues)

  20. Bullet 2013 Tracking the improvement in the safety of individual models over the past 15 years shows that ANCAP safety ratings represent major reductions in risk of injury to drivers

  21. Bullet 2014 Global NCAP award + Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) and ANCAP

  22. Bullet 2015  Vehicle Safety Trends and the Influence of NCAP Safety Ratings + Crashworthiness Testing of Electric and Hybrid Vehicles + (co-author) The Australian Child Restraint Evaluation Program: An Update on Dynamic Assessment Protocols and Observed Dynamic Performance of Child Restraint Systems + Crash Protection Offered to Small Occupants in an Offset Frontal Crash (front seat passengers and airbag interaction) - 24th ESV Gothenburg

  23. Bullet 2016  Future Vehicle Safety in Australasia and the Role of ANCAP - Australian Road Safety Conference, Sept 2016

  24. Bullet 2017 An NCAP Perspective on the Driver Distraction Project – Issues and Challenges - Driver Distraction and Inattention Conference, Paris, March 2017

  25. Bullet 2017 Promoting best practice for Speed Assist Systems - presented at the Global NCAP Seminar on Advancing Speed Assistance Systems

  26. Bullet 2018 Telematics and Vehicle Safety - paper in the May 2018 issue of the Journal of the Australasian College of Road Safety

  27. Bullet 2018 Children in older cars - presentation at the Global NCAP World Congress in Delhi, Sept 2018

  28. Bullet 2019 NEW SAFETY STANDARDS FOR MOTORISED MOBILITY DEVICES IN AUSTRALIA + (co-author) Speeding in crashes in the United States of America: A pilot study using event data recorder information from NASS-CDS - proceedings of 26th ESV

  29. Bullet 2019 Trends in Pedestrian Protection: Australia 2001-2017 - Presentation at 26th ESV (2019)

  30. Bullet 2020 Child restraints for cars in low and middle-income countries & Considerations for the development of a driver distraction safety rating system for new vehicles - Journal of Road Safety, May 2020

  31. Bullet


See also this list of ESV conference papers.


ASTRONOMY, BIOASTRONOMY AND SPACE EXPLORATION


  1. Bullet    1974 Correspondence with Viking Biology Team Leader  Harold (Chuck) Klein concerning the possibility of airborne microscopic life on Mars   

  2. Bullet    1987 Very simple computer program demonstrates surprisingly directional evolution from natural selection. Youtube demonstration of running program.

  3. Bullet    1996 Why are there two tides per day? 

  4. Bullet    1997 Created a webpage Australian Spaceguard to make people aware of the withdrawal of Australian government funding of the highly successful asteroid search led by Duncan Steel. That page has been referred to by US astronaut John Young in The Lunar Base Handbook (page 773)

  5. Bullet     1998 Obtaining permission from Ann Druyan to reproduce Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit from the book Demon Haunted World.  Now copied with acknowledgement at carlsagan.com

  6. Bullet     1998 Research on tsunami from asteroid/comet impacts including a paper Asteroid impacts: the extra hazard due to tsunami published in the Science of Tsunami hazards. UK Parliament report on the NEO  hazard listed the page as "a particularly useful web site" 

  7. Bullet    1999-2003 Rocks from Space - series of articles for Space.com (with help from Rob Britt)

  8. Bullet    2000 Sun-orbiting objects under 1000km in diameter should be called “microplanets” and Pluto-Charon should be regarded as a binary planet because the barycentre is outside the surface of Pluto

  9. Bullet   2001 Taking part in the Genesis radio broadcast with Paul Davies, Malcolm Walter and Phillipa Uwins

  10. Bullet    2001 Developing a method of illustrating possible links between microplanet impacts and mass extinctions - subsequently used in an illustration in Scientific American (page 79) (PDF here)

  11. Bullet    2001 Averaged over millions of years, about 150kg of microbe-laden Earth rocks reach the surface of Mars every year. [2010: about 11g of rocks might reach liquid water each year - that’s 700 tonnes since the Chicxulub impact]

  12. Bullet    2001: Source of the Australasian Tektites? (PDF copy) Meteorite, Vol. 7, p. 34-37 (2001).

  13. Bullet     2002: The Frequency and Predicted Consequences of Cosmic Impacts in the Last 65 Million Years (Bioastronomy 2002: Life Among the Stars, Proceedings of IAU Symposium, co-authored with Benny Peiser)

  14. Bullet    2006 Extra-solar Impacts the size of the Chicxulub impact (that killed the dinosaurs) should be brighter than Venus for several minutes.  On average, such an impact happens every two weeks within a radius of 1000 light years of Earth so some of the very sensitive new telescopes might detect an impact.

  15. Bullet    2010  The Segway personal transporter might make a useful vehicle for astronauts to explore Mars

  16. Bullet   2014  Concept notes for a lightsail balloon


COMMUNITY & ENVIRONMENT


  1. Bullet    1974 A stepped-hull surfboard might overcome high speed instability (now relevant to tow surfing)

  2. Bullet    1977 Windsurfers are brilliant - but snow sailing is difficult

  3. Bullet    1997 Cash-for-clunkers report for NRMA

  4. Bullet    1996 Best chance of deep snow in the Snowy Mountains is late August.

  5. Bullet    1997 Australia needs to act on greenhouse gas emissions

  6. Bullet    1998 East Coast of Australia is vulnerable to tsunami

  7. Bullet    1998 Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit & warning about the reptile within us

  8. Bullet    1999 The risk of tsunami from microplanet impacts tends to be overstated - it takes a microplanet at least 1km in diameter to generate an ocean-crossing mega-tsunami

  9. Bullet    1999 Millennium bugs will cause problems for some computers

  10. Bullet    2000 Diving fins could be more efficient if they had movable vanes

  11. Bullet    2000 Local environment plans should set out a desired future character for a locality and planning should not be based on precedent (more of the same)

  12. Bullet    2000 Draft Rating Protocol for Green Car Guide - prepared for NSW Sustainable Energy Development Authority. Includes a suggested method for rating electric vehicles

  13. Bullet    2001 Take care in responding to terrorist attacks

  14. Bullet    2003 Apple Macs are great

  15. Bullet    2005 Undersea landslides pose a risk of local tsunami along the coast of Australia

  16. Bullet    2006 Geothermal energy (hot rocks) has potential to supply a large proportion of Australia’s electricity and is continuous (provides baseload power)

  17. Bullet   2009 Tsunami Survival Guide for Australian coastal communities



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