MEDIA RELEASE
15 February 2007
Reliability of
Olsen School Zone Flashing Lights
After hearing me criticising the RTA's non-functioning school zone lights on air yesterday someone emailed the radio station to say that they had seen my lights at Peakhurst West Public School not working on a couple of occasions. Here are the full facts regarding the reliability of my ($350) lights versus the RTA's ($36,000) lights.
One set of my lights at Peakhurst West failed on 4 occasions as a result of a faulty 12v transformer supplied by the RTA. It was tripping the Energy Australia safety switch.
I notified the RTA of the problem by phone on 5 Dec 2006 and by email on 7 Dec 2006, 5 Feb 2007 and 8 Feb 2007 (see below). I also telephoned the RTA traffic lights hotline on 5 Feb 2007 and 8 Feb 2007. The RTA did not replace the transformer until 9 Feb 2007, over 2 months after I had first reported the problem.
On 2 other occasions the lights at another sign were flashing after school zone hours due to a separate issue.
On all occasions the problem was fixed within one hour of my being notified of it.
The only other problem with my lights, which did not impact their operation, was the internal computer clocks drifting by a few seconds a week. I adjusted them regularly by radio to keep them accurate. I then resolved the issue by installing GPS receivers in them to obtain the time signal from the satellites. I am not aware of any of the RTA's signs that use that technology to guarantee absolute accuracy.
In the 6 months that my lights have been operating there have thus been 2 problems attributable to my lights. Neither problem resulted in any risk to children and both were fixed before the next school zone period.
In the 3 weeks that the RTA's new lights have been operating there have been problems with at least 5 signs and no doubt more. On each occasion the signs were completely non-functional, in two cases for at least 5 school zone periods, resulting in a potentially increased risk to children. The signs on Taren Pt Rd Caringbah were still not working this morning after 3 days.
My lights are the result of about 3 months research and nil development costs. The RTA's lights are the result of about 4 years research and, it is claimed, hundreds of thousands of dollars of development costs by the commercial tenderers.
I have signed a deed giving the RTA my technology to use free of charge. The RTA has simply offered to refund my out-of-pocket expenses.
The commercial tenderers stand to earn millions of dollars from taxpayers from the installation of their lights.
For more information contact:
Peter Olsen
11 Maple St
Lugarno 2210
0414-538-404
9012-5298 bh
9599-1811 ah