This is a follow on from my blogs on preparing for a USA Road Trip, but it is equally relevant to anyone going to another country and especially where they drive on the opposite side of the road to what you are used to.
It is very easy when you relax into your trip and get up in the morning, to accidentally start driving on the wrong side of the road and many people even in New Zealand have had accidents and even died by losing concentration and automatically driving on the wrong side of the road because they have been doing it for years at home.
The thing that struck me on my first driving experience in the USA was that the traffic lights are often in the middle of the intersection. In New Zealand they are before the intersection, so I almost stopped in the middle of the road.
One of the things on the top of my preparation list was learn the key elements of the US Road Rules. I had my navigation but it wasn’t going to tell me who had right of way. The rules work really well for you once you understand them.
One that was really interesting is 4-way intersections and we found loads of those. The rule is whoever gets there first has right of way, so you really have to pay attention when you get to them.
Another rule that works really well is that you can turn right at a red light if the way is clear, unless there is a sign saying you can’t at that particular intersection. Make sure you come to a complete stop first, I’m told police are often hiding waiting for people to drive straight through.
A rule that I thought was really good on the Interstates was that if a car was broken down on the side of the road, you have to change lanes to give them space.
Whichever country you go to, its worth spending half an hour to make sure you know the basic road rules. Relax and enjoy but don’t relax too much. I was driving onto a major intersection a couple of weeks ago and the nav said turn sharp left, so I did and found myself facing a one way highway full of traffic coming straight at me. I managed to back out safely, but it reminded me of the importance of staying alert at all times. Having said that, I really enjoyed the road trip and the little bit of preparation beforehand made a big difference.
There are some changes to the Road Code coming up on the 25th of March and it scares me to think of how many people can’t or don’t obey the road code as it stands without adding to the confusion. Here’s my experience of driving to work this morning in Auckland this morning, yes this is a soap box blog today, but it may have a correlation with why panelbeaters are doing a roaring trade right now.
I was waiting to go straight through a roundabout. Two cars indicated right turns about 20 metres apart, so I waited to let them through. Neither car turned, they both went straight ahead. They should have been indicating left turns to show they were exiting the roundabout.
I got to the motorway onramp which was managed by the traffic lights designed to keep the flow going on the motorway itself. A guy in a Suzuki Swift in front of me had a gap of about 10 metres in front of him and kept stopping. I changed lanes and yes, the tell tale sign was correct, he was busy texting on his phone and occassionally looked up to see if anyone had moved. When he got to his turn of the green light, he totally missed it and had to wait for another cycle.
But wait folks there’s more, 2 more cars at the same set of lights missed their greens as well, didn’t see them at all. Of course that was the signal for people at the next set of red lights to ignore them when they got their turn, obviously justifying their action because if the idiots who couldn’t stay off their phones were paying attention, they would have already been on their way.
So I’m off the motorway and onto the home straight where 2 lanes merge into one. We are all merging politely when all of a sudden a van comes out of nowhere and brakes hard just in time to miss my car and the car that was merging to my side. I swear the blonde who was driving must have a double jointed neck or a really long one like Anna in the TV series V because as she breaked her head popped up from above her glove box on the passenger side. Maybe she had to accelerate because she couldn’t find something she was looking for, but it would have been a nasty injury if she had waited a second longer to pop her head up to windscreen level. I haven’t mentioned people talking on their phones, eating breakfast and other things they do in commuter traffic because it see this is now normal acceptable behaviou, but this does illustrate to me why people should re sit their licenses so they are aware of what their legal responsiobilities are and we can reduce the number of needless daily accidents and incidents. Just my opinion of course.
A friend of mine was prepped for 2 days with nil by mouth a month or 2 ago for urgent cancer surgery. The first day she got bumped and the 2nd day was the start of a radiographers strike. Last night she was prepped for an 8 hour operation and got bumped due to a critical case that suddenly appeared. We thought she was criticial, but obviously that’s not for us to judge.
I’ve asked the question before “Is hospital the best place to be when you are sick?” and pretty much decided unless it was a private hospital, possibly not. But of course most of us don’t have any choice especially as we get older.
It is nice to see that some things are improving. For example Auckland Health Board has decided to send some patients to private clinics for radiation treatment to reduce waiting times.
I had blogged previously about waiting times at North Shore Hospital based on experiences waiting with family members in A & E and subsequently in corridors in some cases for days, without being assigned to wards. Each time we were told that it was an exceptional case and we were just unlucky. A registrar was sick and therefore his team couldn’t operate was a common excuse. Think about it, an entire team doesn’t operate because one person doesn’t turn up? Maybe they were stretching the truth, being they are short staffed and can’t afford another registrar, and they didn’t turn up because they didn’t exist.
According to the reports, North Shore Hospital is improving and it is now only the 3rd worst in New Zealand. North Shore Hospital supports North Shore and Waitakere with an excess of 400,000 population and rapidly growing. Of course things will change with the new Super City, but the problems won’t go away.
As you can see in previous blogs I’ve written such as ‘76 Deaths, Surgical Mistakes in New Zealand Hospitals‘ I have been pushing for more specialized technology to streamline processes for many years. The technology has been around for a long time, yet we still seem to rely heavily on paper. Tablet and handheld computing has been around for a long time. Most of us use WiFi in the home, in cafe’s, at the airport and understand the power of dealing with information once, accurately and allowing instant access to anyone who needs it in a timely fashion. That’s how we live.
I now see bar codes on patient wrist bands, but I don’t see them being read by a handheld computer to check for allergies, conditions etc at the bedside. This technology could have saved many NZ lives at a tiny fraction of the cost of their lost lives, productivity etc.
When I started promoting this technology, it was with Pocket PC, Palm and Symbol technologies (handheld computers, 3D Bar Code Readers, Portable Printers, Digital Cameras which were being used in many US and European hospitals and that was 20 years ago!
Today there is superior technology such as the Panasonic Mobile Clinical Assistant CF-H1 which runs on Windows 7. The video is pretty corny but it really does illustrate how efficient it is to use mobile technology. Of course this technology has a rugged drop spec, is chemical resistant, lasts 6 hours on a standard battery.
This technology means everyone is in sync and has access to critical data on demand. Paper gets misplaced in hospitals. I had one visit with a daughter that was delayed by 90 minutes simply because someone had misplaced her file. Data can be shared with specialists and medical staff in and out of hospital, including images such as scans, x-rays, photos, test results, charts and graphs. Allergies and condition interactions can be monitored to minimise risk of causing new problems, doses can be confirmed, approvals provided remotely. Pretty much the whole world’s medical knowledge is available online today.
Today’s world should be about harnessing technology to work smarter rather than harder. I suspect the focus is on cost of the technology because our hospitals are run by administrators tasked with saving money. Of course they are largely man aged by politicians. If health is a major election platform every election, why is it that the performance is still so poor?
Next time you are in hospital, have a look at how they use or don’t use technology. Think about how you operate in your business. Think about what’s at stake and ask them why they do things the way they do.
We have national elections next year. They will be talking about improving the health system. Will they be talking about improving the ICT structure and putting information in the hands of the clinicians? Or will they be talking about saving money, improving the monitoring of staff performance and measuring waiting times in A&E?
We have an ageing population and growing population. They are going to need more services and we could increase our throughput, reduce patient risk, significantly improve outcomes by harnessing technology, working smarter rather than harder, expecting great results from staff working double shifts several times a week.
I read a story in this morning’s NZ Herald which doesn’t appear to be available online. It was about a new web site which people can use to pass on all their passwords and account details for everything they do on the web from your online banking to all your web sites, social networking pages etc.
This was something I hadn’t considered before from my own perspective, or from those I leave behind. There are of course practical issues, such as having access to my online banking accounts but also my blogs, the sites where I post my music, such as MySpace and Music Forte, and my social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
The practical things are important because I would want to ensure that my beneficiaries have access to all my assets, but there are also the emotional considerations. Unless someone does something about it, my blogs and my social networking pages will remain forever. Personally I think it would be nice to leave a digital footprint behind, especially for my music, but also where people can remember me, almost like a legacy, where my own perspectives can be seen, rather than other people’s interpretations of them.
The NZ Herald story, which came from Telegraph Group Ltd, (which I also couldn’t find online) raised issues of the pain that it might cause to people left behind, when their loved ones pass away, seeing all their posts, photos and other net based activities, like footprints in the sand that people can see in time to come. It could be very painful.
On the other hand, I would love to be able to access information left by my forefathers. I have travel diaries from my grandparents and a small number of photos, but mostly their information is lost forever, or scattered, not shared, amongst my many cousins, uncles and aunts.
So the Legacy Locker service allows you to ensure that people left behind have access to all your accounts and can follow through on your wishes after you pass on. I don’t know how they find out that you have died, their must be a mechanism for that, but you have the ability to write an email that will be delivered to your beneficiaries after your death, so that they have access to all the information you want them to find.
It looks like they have all the systems you need including bank level security, to ensure that your data is safe. Check them out here.
They make a good point on their site that online assets have value. There may be areas of financial value, but there is also the intrinsic value of having access to photos that you may not have ever printed, music, diaries / blogs and traces of all your relationships, business, family and friends.
The pricing is also very reasonable, $30 a year, a flat fee of $300 and you can also have a free trial. I’m not so sure about the free trial other than being able to evaluate how it all works, but it is something I would probably do if I was going to sign up. Will I sign up, not at the moment, but maybe some time in the future, who knows?
I’ve been meaning to cancel my NZ Herald subscription, but every time I think about it, I find a nice little snippet that I might not have read, or at least till much later. In this morning’s paper (and online yesterday!) was news about a new version of the Segway designed to solve problems with urban traffic. Now first of all I have to say that I love Segways. I’ve only been on them twice and I am hooked.
A friend of mine, Steve Simms is involved with Segway Polo in New Zealand and makes me jealous every time I hear about the competition, which attracts tech leaders from around the world. I asked Steve how I could join in and he replied “Buy a Segway”. Unfortunately my wife didn’t like that idea very much.Anyway, if you go to YouTube and search for Segway Polo, you’ll find some examples.
Segway’s are used a lot in the US. When I was in Los Angeles earlier this year, I saw airport police similar to the ones in this image using Segways to get around the massive complex. I could have used one myself, having set off in the wrong direction to change airlines. If you are in Auckland and want to try one, go to Devonport Wharf and you can go for a 2-hour tour of Devonport and historic locations for only $75, cut that in half for US dollars.
So what caught my attention this morning was a story about the new Segway PUMA (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility) which is a 2 man Segway with little trainer wheels on the front for safety and a roof that looks a bit like a roll cage. Looking like something out of a futuristic Science Fiction movie, this is for real. Once again an example of Science Fiction becoming reality, I guess its about this time that I appreciate the value of all those It is designed to haver a range of around 55 km at 55km an hour according to the NZ Herald. On the site I found that it also has features such as regenrative breaking, which means that it uses the inertia from stopping, to help charge the batteries. I’m not sure where the rest of the story came from because it wasn’t mirrored on the Segway page, but it said that it could ultimately drive itself using GPS and by monitoring traffic around it, being able to stop in a hurry if there is an incident ahead of it.
Given that I’m into LBS, I had a couple of issues with that concept. It would work if there were roads or paths that were only to be used by Segways but otherwise there could be a fatal flaw, because the concept of vehicles driving themselves and being aware of other vehicles (which will definitely happen one day) will only work if all the vehicles on the same stretch of road also carried the same technology. In New Zealand, the new RapidcV that GeoSmart is driving around New Zealand could certainly provide the data that would support this type of technology, because it is gathering full road and lane information nationwide at sub 20 cm accuracy. What is also nice is that as well as camber information it is also gathering inclination data, which could be used to identify routes that would support the Segway by identifying the range based on hills it has to climb up and downhill where it can recharge itself.
So it happened again. A 62 year old woman driving home from Christchurch crashed her car down a 5 metre bank on her way home to Greymouth, was the story in this morning’s NZ Herald. If she had a GPS capable mobile with the type of tracking application I have been blogging about here and here, she may not have had to spend2 days lying on broken grass out in the cold and could have been rescued far sooner.
The GPS in her phone could have told family or rescuers exactly where she was and with tools like GeoSmart’s Directions API, her rescuers could have had turn by turn directions right to the site of her misfortune.
This is not an uncommon story. Given the bush, the narrow, dark and windy roads around New Zealand’s beautiful countryside, combined with sometimes treacherous conditions of rain, black ice, snow, flooding and slips, there are frequently stories of people losing their car and slipping into a ravine, or worse. I hate to think of what the cost is in resources for search and rescue. Over a year it must mount up to far more than the cost of developing a mobile application that could work on all phones.
In urban areas, often cell triangulation would work, but in the many rural areas, the cell towers are often too far apart to provide an accurate fix. It’s interesting that the topic of Tracking Elderly People is one of the most popular searches that find my blogs. Of course it isn’t just about elderly people. There are many segments of our population that could benefit from a mobile tracking application. People like diabetics, blind or disabled, people with other illnesses such as asthma, allergies such as bee and wasp stings, epilepsy and Alzheimers or other forms of dementia are just a few examples.
Hopefully sometime soon, someone will use GeoSmart’s tools or come up with some funding to develop a tracking system to solve this problem.
While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course http://luigicappel.wordpress.com.
The thing that struck me on my first driving experience in the USA was that the traffic lights are often in the middle of the intersection. In New Zealand they are before the intersection, so I almost stopped in the middle of the road.
