TWO STUDENTS from Co Down have come up with a simple solution to the problem of people using mobile phones while driving.
The pair designed a system that jams all mobile use unless a car’s handbrake is on.
Abeer Shahid and James McCartan, both 16 and in GCSE year at Abbey Christian Brothers in Co Down, developed the system that wipes out all phone use while a car is moving.
“It blocks out the phone signal so you can’t use it for talking or texting while driving,” explained Abeer. “It sends out a frequency that is in the same frequency used by mobile phones.” The two signals mix, making conversation or texting impossible.
Their design involves wiring a jammer into the ignition and brake switch so it cannot be circumvented. They developed the idea and then began searching for what they needed to build it.
“It was hard work and we did have to learn a lot, but it was fun too,” Abeer said.
Safety of a different kind was on the agenda for Clodagh Buckley and Shannen Corcoran when they developed simple-to- understand symbols to help people taking prescription medicines.
Both are 15-year-old transition year students from Blackwater Community School in Waterford, and they devised symbols that tell a patient the correct dosages.
They designed easily understood symbols and then tested these on subjects in a series of surveys. They then surveyed 200 more people, asking them about whether they ever read the instructions that come with medicines. Most did but only incompletely, said Shannen.
“The survey told us people do read instructions but they don’t understand them,” she said.
Most of the symbols were readily understood by those viewing them, Clodagh said, but they had difficulty with one – a symbol indicating a drug was not to be taken during pregnancy.
A startling lack of safety was apparent when Eilish Bonner and Aideen Meehan of Rosses Community School in Co Donegal decided to test “childproof” tablet containers and bottles.
They got push-and-twist bottles, squeeze-and-twist bleach bottles and safety cap tablet containers and tested them on 66 four- to seven-year-olds in their local primary school. “Every student in senior infants could open every bottle,” said Aideen.
Eilish said most of the infants could open them within a minute, and all of them could do this after watching the two experimenters open them.
“This showed that if they watch parents to see how to open them they could quickly catch on to it.”
They got the idea after Eilish’s younger brother became ill after drinking from a bleach bottle.
They describing their findings as “shocking”, and encouraged parents to put dangerous substances out of reach.
