Safety engineering approach to public accident prevention
Masahiro Kinoshita, Tsuyoshi Sunada · Nippon Eiseigaku Zasshi (Japanese Journal of Hygiene) · 1966
It is very regretted that efforts to study and improve public accident prevention have been made too less than those to work accident prevention, although peoples killed in public accident are more than those in on-the-job accident. We will now make some works to approach to this problem from the point of public safety engineering, and especially devote to develop new device of accident preventing instruments.More than 5, 000 persons die from accidental drowning a year in Japan. And more than 50% of these victims are in younger age groups. Learning to swim and acquiring of knowledge of the rules of water safety can not be expected for such younger children. Hence, besides the measures of safety education and achievement of a safety environment, more skilled engineering must be built into drowning preventing equipments and instruments. As an example of such instruments, we devised a drowning alarm. This is a very tiny (5.7×3.7×2.0cm), light-weight (29 grams), and portable instrument. When one who can not swim wearing this alarm drops or falls into the water, the alarm can be detatched from him, rise up to the water surface, and discharge alarming sound from the buzzer within it. All activities of the alarm were made to work automatically immediatoly after it came to contact with the water by light-weight silver battery provided within it. Little modified alarms useful for discharging alarming sound manually on the water to call for help while swimming, diving, fishing and boating were also developed.