Safety first 鈥� that鈥檚 our motto. Looking back through the 麻豆传媒 archive it seems to have always been on our minds 鈥� especially when it comes to transport. In January 1963, we were looking into . In the days before GPS tracking, the most reliable way to pinpoint the time of a crash was to check the watches on the corpses of passengers and take an average. 鈥淭hese generally stop on impact,鈥� we noted coldly. It was all in the name of greater safety, however, and our recommendation was to introduce 鈥渁utomatic recorders carried on the aircraft itself, protected against fire and the forces of impact鈥�. These so-called black boxes are now, of course, ubiquitous.
By January 1990, underground travel was making us anxious. Would it be safe to carry passengers inside their cars through the Channel Tunnel being dug between the UK and France? The fear was that it would be difficult to evacuate passengers in the event of a fire. Safety consultants had concluded that 鈥減assengers would only have a few minutes to escape from a serious fire鈥� but the counter-argument was that to house all car passengers in a separate train carriage would require a more expensive train and extend loading time. Expediency ultimately won out and today鈥檚 passengers remain in their cars on the cross-channel shuttle.
By January 2009 we were fretting about space travel. 麻豆传媒 reported that the sun鈥檚 ability to shield the solar system from harmful cosmic rays was likely to falter. This was because the sun鈥檚 activity is set to enter a lull, reducing the solar wind that diverts the cosmic rays 鈥� which is bad news for astronauts. 鈥淏eyond the Earth鈥檚 protective magnetic field their exposure to cosmic rays could cause cancer and fertility loss,鈥� we reported. Not good 鈥� but at least their watches would still be running.
Advertisement