Friday, 31 July 2009 16:08 Written by Maxwell Shifman

Dr George Rechinitzer was interviewed by Today Tonight on 30 July 2009 about the state of level crossing safety in Victoria:

“Careless driving, or what I’d like to call some ‘moron’ driving is just one small component of level crossing safety....

There’s really a... been a deficit of attention to crossings, a deficit of funding and there hasn’t been due attention paid to improving the safety of the crossings.”

The full video can be viewed below:

Delta-V Experts provides incident investigation for all sorts of workplace and traffic incidents, including level crossing collisions.

Saturday, 11 July 2009 14:12 Written by Maxwell Shifman

Delta-V Experts (DVE) congratulates Shane Richardson on completing his PhD. His thesis, "Performance Criteria for Effective Structural Rollover Protective Systems for Light Passenger Vehicles", has been accepted, and reflects over ten years of theoretical and practical work in the field of rollover protection system (or roll damage mininmisation device) design. He officially graduates on 29 October 2009.

Dr Richardson intends to continue his hard work on rollover reduction and vehicle handling assessment amongst his other expertise in his role as a Principal Engineer at DVE.

Saturday, 20 June 2009 19:05 Written by Maxwell Shifman

Shane Richardson, one of Delta-V Experts Principal Forensic Engineers, was featured on ABC’s Stateline program on 19 June 2009, following the acquittal of the truck driver involved in the Kerang rail disaster. The program examined the state of level crossing safety within Victoria, and whether the evidence from the trial could be used in a potential legal action against the Victorian State Government.

Delta-V Experts was heavily involved in the accident investigation regarding another level crossing collision which occurred at Trawalla:

SHANE RICHARDSON, ENGINEER: The driver was not in a position to be able to see.
It's the problem we have if all we wanna do is blame the driver, it gives us a really simple out in terms of the safety system: it's always the driver's fault.
LUKE WATERS: Forensic engineer Shane Richardson helped recreate the accident for the court case and says the risk of another Trawalla or Kerang is ever present.
SHANE RICHARDSON: There are level crossings that have the potential of this type of event to occur still in Victoria…

The Victorian Government has largely adopted the recommendations from the Parliamentary Inquiry into Level Crossing Safety, such as those presented by Delta-V Experts in its submission. It will, however, take a considerable period before all of the level crossings are suitably upgraded:

LUKE WATERS: Up to 45 level crossings will be upgraded each year, but according to Opposition spokesman Terry Mulder, that means the Government's leaving hundreds as potential death traps.
TERRY MULDER, OPPOSITION SPOKESMAN: Their prioritisation of rail spending in this state has been appalling. Fast trains (inaudible) smart cards and yet we've got these level crossings around the state that haven't been addressed, even though the Government knew and were warned that there was going to be a catastrophic accident at one of them, sooner or later.
LYNNE KOSKY: Terry's playing politics and this is not an issue to play politics with.
TERRY MULDER: This is a political issue. It is a political issue. And we're going to use every measure that we have to make sure that the Government act and act promptly, because they haven't in the past.
SHANE RICHARDSON: It's a tragedy that will happen and will continue to happen until we address it in such a way that we've mitigated almost all of the level crossings that we've got in place.

The full transcript of the program can be downloaded from the Stateline website.

Thursday, 11 June 2009 10:49 Written by Maxwell Shifman

Dr George Rechnizer, Shane Richardson, Maxwell Shifman and Dr Andrew Short of Delta-V Experts have come up with the latest concept for improving safety, whether on the road or in the workplace: Interface Design. The first article on this concept has been published in the May 2009 issue of the Australian College of Road Safety Journal:

Road safety initiatives over the years have been heralded by concepts such as behavioural issues, new safety features in vehicles and road improvement projects. These have progressively reduced the road toll by targeting high priority issues, but without new directions the initiatives may have diminishing returns over time. Furthermore, it is well known to engineers that holistic and system wide approaches such as Vision Zero are fundamentally more powerful as they target elimination with a coordinated approach to the problem rather than progressive reduction with isolated actions.

This paper identifies the concept of “Interface Design” as a potential catalyst for the next major advances in road safety. Interface Design is a holistic approach which encourages players in the development of systems to consider all possible interfaces of their project. The authors show some examples of interface design and in the process hope to highlight how this design and engineering approach represents a new frontier.

The full text of the article can be downloaded here.

Tuesday, 07 April 2009 15:27 Written by Maxwell Shifman

DVE's Swan ROPS has been accepted as a finalist in the 2009 Manufacturer's Monthly Endeavour Awards.

In an attempt to address vehicle rollover crash problems, Delta V Experts (DVExperts International) has developed a high performance rollover protection system which can be retrofitted to a wide range of light vehicles.

ROPS (Rollover Protective Structure) have been developed for all types of vehicles ranging from All Terrain Vehicles (Quad Bikes), light vehicles (SUVs, wagons, utilities etc), small and large trucks and even combat tanks.

The company has also developed a ROPS Performance criteria, and test protocols to ensure effective light vehicle ROPS design and implementation.

The Delta-V Expert ROPS system is competing in the "Australian Consumer/Trade Product of the Year" category with eleven other finalists. The awards ceremony will be held on 13 May 2009 at the RACV Club, Melbourne.