Page 44 - Australasian Paint & Panel Magazine Sep-Oct 2018

CRASH COURSE
STONERS HELP PREVENT ACCIDENTS
Forget speed cameras and warning signs. If you want to reduce accidents employ a druid.
WHILST RESEARCHING THE history of car crash prevention, I came across what most people would regard as bizarre solutions to fixing accident black spots. Although, depending on your philosophical bent, you may see them as innovative. Indeed, they’re a world away from the speed camera approach we’ve been taking.
One article cited an English town that put the power of prayer to work to bring down the crime rate and reduce traffic accidents. Apparently there was some measure of success though the sceptics argued that the Christian effort probably succeeded because the whole town was involved and everyone knew about it. This, they say, could have prompted locals to drive more carefully.
One wonders nonetheless, what the smash repairers were up to during the prayer sessions!
Not to be outdone, sometime back in 2001 Austrian road safety officials were at their wit’s end and open to trying anything after customary measures like warning signs, speed reduction, securing bends and road re-surfacing failed to reduce the number of fatalities on a black spot stretch of motorway in Styria. They gave their blessing to druids (Celtic priests) for a secret trial which entailed the erection of stone monoliths beside the notorious black spot.
Highways engineer
Harold Dimbacher admitted to being really sceptical at first and certainly didn’t want people to know what his staff were doing, so they kept it secret. Putting up quartz monoliths by the side of the road isn’t exactly invisible, but apparently Austrians mustn’t ask a lot of questions.
During the two year trial period, the number of fatal crashes fell from an average of six a year to zero! Dimbacher was so impressed with the incredible result that his department planned to expand it by erecting the monoliths at other blackspots.
The druid responsible for the result, Gerald Knobloch, explained that after he inspected the particular section of motorway he located various elements that had disrupted the energy flow. There was a river which man had forced to flow against its natural direction. By erecting a stone on each side of the road, the energy lines were restored.
Knobloch likened the function of the stones to that of acupuncture needles. “What acupuncture does for the body, stones do for the environment,” he claimed.
He added that some drivers were being disturbed by the energy imbalance and because of the variable energy flow, they
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could get a high amount of adrenalin. This could be followed by short blackout and an accident follows.
By 2010, Austrian authorities concluded that druids had been so successful in dealing with motorway black spots in one area that they planned to extend the project nationwide.
In addition to erecting quartz monoliths to restore an area’s natural energy flow, the druids had even developed a less unsightly and much more economic modern-day solution in burying plastic slates with magnets underground.
Another druid, Ilmar Tessman was enlisted as a last resort after a high number of fatal crashes were reported on a straight stretch of motorway near Salzburg. There, he discovered that radiation from a nearby mobile phone tower was disrupting the area’s normal terrestrial radiation and was responsible for the crashes.
“Installing the monoliths has successfully negated that,” he claimed.
Scientists, however, remained sceptical and unconvinced. “Natural sciences need evidence. Whatever can’t be measured, does not exist,” said Dr. Georg Walach from the geophysics department at Leoben University in southern Austria. “These energy lines and their flow cannot be grasped or measured, and their existence is therefore rejected by scientists.”
But Tessman claimed the proof was in the results. “If you ask me to
give you a scientific explanation, I can’t. I just know it works, and even the critics can’t argue with our success rate,” he said.
And you may have thought you had rocks in your head working in the industry.
Smash repairers may actually profit from the automotive chaos which will most likely ensue as more autonomous vehicles are let loose to mix with vehicles that have a human driver.
As an indication, an autonomous shuttle in Las Vegas started its 0.6 mile loop with a crunch. Less than an hour into its service, it was involved in a crash where its front end was grazed by a large delivery truck reversing into a street.
According to a Las Vegas City representative’s statement, the shuttle “did what it was supposed to do, in that its sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped to avoid the accident. Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has, the accident would have been avoided.”
Despite the shuttle just sitting there without honking a warning as the truck slowly backed into it, a spokesperson for the service added, “it’s a perfect example of the human error that we’re trying to avoid.”
Go figure.
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