High school students create Road Iron, the pothole detector

Some high school students near Boston have figured out what has eluded transit agencies for hundreds of years: they have come up with the Road Iron, a device that detects and repairs potholes before they have a chance to form. The device looks for cavities below the pavement and then drills in and fills them, fixing the problems before they occur.  The current method of "fill the hole after someone kills their suspension" could very well be replaced by something that was discovered in a classroom. 

[SK @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Leave it to smart kids to come up with an elegant solution to a common problem that engineers and city planners couldn't come up with for 20 years!

Good for them!

Now, lets see if the politicians can keep their grubby paws out of this!

[dawggpie @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

I could be off base, but I'm gonna assume that the city was capable of coming up with something like this. I'm not sure how it works, but I'd think the technology is pretty simple like using sonar to detect air pockets just under the road. The city probably doesn't have the time to scan all the roads because they're tied up with the big dig. Their after the fact approach of filling pot holes after they form isn't very forward thinking, but it's probably cheaper. Gotta give the kids props for coming up with a cool device tho... much better than anything i did in hs.

[JD @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Ha, SK, I'm sure it's not that they couldn't figure it out I'm sure it's because they didn't care too. Not a serious enough problem to fund.

[jwardell @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

From Boston...of course! Does it overload when it realizes our entire road infrastructure is one big pot hole?