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Surabaya. All drivers are familiar with them, and most despise them. We are of course talking about speed bumps, which serve the seemingly noble purpose of slowing vehicles down in high-risk areas, but which are really the bane of car drivers.

You may always obey the speed limit, but still you have to negotiate these obstacles. Even worse, your pride and joy is your low-slung car and no matter how slowly or at what angle you cross the speed bump, you still hear that ominous grating sound from under the front of your car as it passes over the top of a hump.

If this sounds familiar, then you may be interested in the work of two young inventors, Vincent Aditya and Ryan Naiola. These third-year students at Yayasan Pembangunan Soroako High School in South Sulawesi have created a Dynamic Speed Bump, which lowers itself if your vehicle is moving at a safe speed.

“With this invention we are respecting those who are obedient drivers. It’s not fair that law-abiding road users are made to feel uncomfortable when passing over road humps,” Vincent said.

The system uses two sensors installed a few meters apart on the approach to the speed bump. An approaching vehicle triggers one sensor and then the other, and then there is a rapid calculation of the vehicle’s speed. If the vehicle is traveling at a safe speed, the Dynamic Speed Bump lowers automatically.

“If the interval is short [between the two sensors], it means the vehicle is traveling at a high speed. If the interval is long, it means the vehicle is traveling slowly,” Vincent said.

The two students’ invention made it to the finals of the National Electro Creation event, organized by Tenth of November Institute of Technology in Surabaya.

“The main difficulty in constructing the Dynamic Speed Bump was in synchronizing the vehicle speed sensors with the lowering of the speed bump,” Vincent said.

If their invention makes it to the streets, drivers will no doubt be thankful for the students’ efforts.