By David Ponce
Well this is about as low tech as things can get, but it’s interesting anyway. The Harbin Public Transport Company in the northeastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang has seen it fit to include specially labeled “emergency” bricks onto 300 of their 700 bus fleet. Why? So you can easily break windows and exit should the doors somehow become inoperable in an incident. There’s one brick by the driver’s seat, and another towards the back of the buses.
Wouldn’t a purpose-built hammer be easier for stunned and shocked accident victims to use? Perhaps, but… “The special hammers are expensive and people were always stealing them,” explained a spokesperson from the Harbin Public Transport Company. “We don’t think anybody will be interested in stealing bricks.” Famous last words?
This being China, perhaps there’s some hope that they won’t be misused or stolen, but you can bet that if this was America…
VIA [ Inventorspot ]
No matter how low technology a brick can be, it’s well effective enough to break a glass. One question is what if the bus is on it’s side? it’s going to be hard to break the glasses for that matter because the brick will just drop on you.