Automatic vehicle monitoring: A life saver

The probability of surviving a heart attack decreases rapidly with delay in receiving basic life support measures. Research indicates that there is a 50% chance of recovery if basic life support measures are instituted within four minutes from the onset of an attack. The survival rate drops below 10% when the response time is greater than six minutes. A two-minute difference in response time is life or death for over one-third of all heart attack victims. Among the factors contributing to the delay in responding to any emergency, whether it is a heart attack, burglary in progress, severe auto accident, or a bus driver in trouble, is determining the exact location of the incident and dispatching the closest available assistance. In a rural or urban area, automatic vehicle location and monitoring techniques can reduce this delay. Automatic Vehicle Monitoring (AVM) systems provide information and control capabilities for fleets of vehicles by determining the position and status of selected vehicles in the fleet. Also included in AVM, for discussion in this paper, are self-contained vehicle positioning systems which might be used to locate the site of a safety-related incident in rural areas. AVM has many safety applications in emergency medical services, law enforcement, mass transit, and environmental protection programs. This paper will discuss the subsystems that are inherent in AVM systems; various techniques and characteristics of some existing AVM systems; and some examples of the many contributions to safety that can be accomplished through AVM.