PENNSYLVANIA TEEN GENIUS TOTALLY FIXED A PROBLEM EVERYONE HAS: WINDSHIELD BLIND SPOTS
So this shouldn’t be bothering me because I’m totally middle aged. But I feel like an underachiever (again!) with the recent news of a teen genius from West Grove, Pennsylvania. And by teen, I mean 14 years old! Her name is Alaina Gassler and she decided she didn’t like those blind spots that every car has. You know, the frame of the car on either side of the windshield? They kind of have to be there. But in some cars, they can be a real occasional hazard. So Alaina decided to create some tech of her own to fix these blind spots!
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AUTOMAKERS THE WORLD OVER HAVE PRETTY MUCH IGNORED THIS PROBLEM, SHOULD ALL PAY THIS TEEN GIRL GENIUS
So yes, Alaina is too young to have a driver’s license, even in the state of Pennsylvania. But she still wanted to fix a problem that pretty much the entire industry of car makers worldwide have ignored. And since she’s not a rich kid, she relied on simple, affordable hardware anyone can find at an electronics store. Or online, of course. She installed webcams facing out from a car’s windshield pillar, as you can see above. The other end of the solution is the projection of that live feed on the inside of the very same pillar. This cam/projection combo lets the driver actually see thru the pillar, in real time. No more blind spots! Genius.
Related:
https://www.theblot.com/time-traveler-droids-flying-cars/
TEEN GENIUS WON SAMUELI FOUNDATION 1ST PRIZE, $25,000 FOR HELPING THE WORLD
Alaina presented her project, “Improving Automobile Safety by Removing Blind Spots,” at 2019’s Society for Science and the Public’s Broadcom MASTERS science and engineering competition. And yes, she totally won a prize. But it was the top prize! The Samueli Foundation Prize. But that also comes with $25,000 that Alaina was able to take home with her! So here’s hoping automakers are paying attention to this teen genius. There’s absolutely nothing preventing them from refining this tech to make it work seamlessly in any car, anywhere. Blind spots in the front of cars should already be a thing of the past.
