Safe Departures

SkyTran makes boarding smooth and safe with both advanced technology and attention to common-sense basics.  Non-slip surfaces shielded from the weather, sturdy grips and ergonomic vehicle entry as easy as reclining in your favorite dining room chair let even passengers who are frail or have poor balance board with confidence.  The raised and brightly marked platform makes it clear where you should wait and where the SkyTran vehicles will be moving. Sensors prevent cars moving if people or objects are in the way, or leaving before the riders are properly belted in.

Safe Journeys

The General Motors exhibits at the 1939 and 1964 World Fairs promised very safe, self-driving cars, but "Intelligent Highway" safety technologies have yet to see large scale application.  Automobiles still cause 95% of all transportation related deaths [1], injuring more than 6 million people and killing nearly 40,000 people every year in America. [2]  Young adults are hit the hardest: cars are the number one killer of teenagers - 5,000 kids age 16 to 20 die every year in car accidents [3].  Besides accidents due to inexperienced drivers, driver distraction is a major problem. Cell phones are the biggest new culprit, and the target of numerous new laws. Several states' laws require hands-free microphones, but several studies have shown that hands-free conversation is just as bad as hand-held cell phone use. They suggest that cell-phone conversations put drivers and their passengers in as much risk as a person who is legally drunk (0.08% BAC) [4]. None of these laws or risks are an issue with SkyTran, because the vehicles are computer-driven. SkyTran does the driving for you, and it is never distracted by a phone call, an upset child, or a poor night's sleep. 

"Intelligent highway" safety technologies are much easier to apply on SkyTran because its basic design has already removed most of the risks that we face in today's cars. Most important: guideways are high above pedestrians and obstacles on the ground, and SkyTran vehicles are locked into the track and cannot derail or skid off the road like a car. Like freeways, SkyTran guideways use "grade separation" to eliminate intersections where most accidents on ordinary roads occur (north-south guideways thirty feet and east-west guideways twenty feet in the air, for example).  Guideways have only a single lane, and all vehicles on one guideway move at the same speed, eliminating other major sources of accidents. Because vehicles are powered by the track, you aren't riding next to a twenty-gallon gas tank as you are in a car -- SkyTran's all-electric grid benefits more than the environment!  Radar and sensors in the guideway track the position of other vehicles, and your control computer monitors all these inputs thousands of times a second. On the rare occasions when they need to make an emergency stop, vehicles can stop much faster than a car with highly efficient mechanical brakes that can come to a complete stop from 100-MPH in less than 60 feet. Because the brakes and magnetic suspension are inside the guideway, they aren't affected by rain, ice or snow -- SkyTran vehicles won't even need to slow down in weather that would virtually close ordinary roads. Instead of needing to constantly watch the road ahead, SkyTran riders can enjoy video chats with other riders or surf the Web; even sleep -- in complete safety.  Just sit back and enjoy the ride!

Ready for any situation

A medical emergency like a heart attack, seizure, or stroke is doubly dangerous if it happens while you are driving. Here's where SkyTran's self-driving vehicles really shine. Not only is there no risk that an incapacitated driver will crash or endanger other vehicles, but if you can manage to press the vehicle "Emergency" button, then an emergency operator will intervene, assess the situation and re-route you straight to a hospital emergency room. People with medical conditions like epilepsy or heart problems can wear monitors that detect a dangerous event and communicate with the system for them, even if they are unconscious.

There is normally little need for policing on SkyTran than on public transportation, because you won't be riding with strangers. However, if you should be assaulted by the other rider and manage to alert the operators, your next stop will be inside a police station, where they can explain themselves to the authorities.

Always a way home

Computers in the SkyTran guideway and your vehicle are always watching for problems, and scanning the network of available routes to find a safe path around maintenance or any other outages. 

Even in the event of a city-wide power outage, the SkyTran network has its own power backups to get vehicles to their destination, or at least to the next station. Even if all the system backups fail, vehicles naturally coast a long distance before they slow down from 100 MPH to a relatively low speed when magnetic levitation stops supporting them. Then they set down on their landing wheels, just as they do approaching a station. Each vehicle has a battery and small motor that is guaranteed to power it until it reaches a station.

Rough weather is much less of a problem for SkyTran vehicles' small, streamlined forms than for cars and SUVs. Hurricanes and high winds will stop SkyTran, but lesser winds will have little effect. Because the vehicles hang from the track, they can simply tilt from side to side as they do when banking around curves, and neither the guideway nor the occupants will experience much stress.  Driver's vision per se is not an issue, although lidar (light radar) collision detection might be affected.

Even in the event of an earthquake, SkyTran's light and rigid guideway and super-light vehicles that hang from the track have fundamental physical advantages over elevated freeways and rail lines made of heavy and brittle concrete. Automated vehicles have another big advantage: when a seismographic earthquake alert is received, all vehicles can take appropriate action: exiting at the nearest station if there's time, or at least braking to a stop long before the oscillations reach their peak.

Safe arrivals

Getting home from work late at night?  Don't worry.  Because SkyTran is designed to provide comprehensive coverage of your city, you're just a few blocks from your front door.  Want to make sure your destination doesn't have any surprises?  Use your vehicle's multimedia terminal to check the destination station's security cameras to be sure it's safe. You can talk with a SkyTran operator if you see something suspicious, and re-route your vehicle to a different station at the last minute if you are concerned -- or just if you just forgot to buy milk!

Safe communities

A community where every family can send their kids to school without worry of car accidents or catching the wrong bus is a safer, stronger community.  But SkyTran adds to community security in many other ways.
For example, SkyTran's precision linear motion controllers can detect if a SkyTran vehicle needs even a little more energy than expected to accelerate; so if you've left a briefcase in the SkyTran vehicle, it will detect that it is not fully empty as it moves off the platform, alert you and back up so you can retrieve it. A SkyTran Lost and Found Department will be a lonely place!  If something you left isn't detected, it can be reported by the next passenger (no need to turn it in themselves; since the vehicle can do that automatically). Getting your umbrella or cellphone back will be a snap at the SkyTran Lost and Found; since you can prove you were in that vehicle before them.  More importantly, packages left in a vehicle by vandals or would-be terrorists will be immediately detected and evaluated, and the vehicle routed to secure handling facilities.

In an age of heightened security concerns, SkyTran's distributed design is inherently far safer than mass transit. SkyTran's system never produces concentrated crowds of people, and thus would not be a likely target. Even though the whole SkyTran grid can handle huge numbers of people, each individual vehicle carries at most two people, and only one or a few people will be in each of the hundreds or thousands of SkyTran stations at any one time. Even a bus stop may have a dozen or more passengers waiting many minutes; by comparison, each passenger's window of vulnerability in a "walk up and ride" SkyTran station is relatively tiny. 

The SkyTran grid is also much more difficult to disrupt, because it is a widely distributed network with a large number of alternative pathways. Each vehicle and each section of guideway has its own control computers that communicate with others but are locally self-sufficient. There are multiple power backups and multiple communications channels. So even if multiple guideway sections, power stations and control centers are damaged, almost all vehicles can continue on to their destinations with little disruption. In sum, SkyTran addresses today's security concerns by being too distributed, redundant and robust to be a worthwhile target.

In summary:

* SkyTran vehicles are locked into the track and can't derail.
* SkyTran vehicles travel above roads and walkways, so collisions with normal traffic are impossible.
* SkyTran's guideway, vehicles, and portals satisfy ASCE earthquake requirements. * SkyTran's magnetic levitation system is immune from slick conditions or rough weather. * SkyTran doesn't have intersections. This eliminates the possibility of head-on or side-impact collisions.
* SkyTran vehicles automatically detect any obstacle in their path and can stop in 1/10th the distance that a car can * SkyTran vehicles get a user safely home even in the event of power outages or other disruption * SkyTran increases safety by getting you close to home, and letting you check that the way is safe. * SkyTran increases security by reducing and monitoring possible threats.