I Just Ran, I Ran All Night and Day, I Couldn't Get Away

When I was in college I took a class in Traffic Engineering. I learned they were traffic signals, not stop lights like Mom called them. I remember the course because I did a paper on the types of vehicle detection used to make them "actuated" or able to tell a car is waiting to go. At that time they used a weight sensitive bar (that mechanically wore out and had to be replaced), an induction loop that used a magnetic loop to pick up a vehicle in the magnetic field of the loop (but you had to cut them into the pavement and when you overlaid with a new surface it messed them up), and a new technology at the time was motion detection that was supposed to be the next greatest thing, (but it turned out blowing leaves and birds could give a false reading.) Here lately they have a new video camera detector that also seemed to be turning into a flop. (The best ones in my opinion were/are the magnetic loops.)

When I was a kid I was always exploring the world around me. Mom told me once she was panicked when I was three or four because she thought I had drank turpentine. That was way before they ever thought of child-proof lids, and probably why. I think I just took a big whiff...and somehow got it on my lips. I loved to disassemble my toys (and put them back together). I told the traffic engineering story because it reminded me of a first hand full body experience I had as a kid with similar technology. At least once a week, I would go to the grocery store with Mom before I started school. I believe she was glad when she could go to the store without me. This story will be all the proof you need to know I'm right.

When my sister was a baby I loved help mom pushing her in the cart through the store (I was around 5 or 6 and she was 2). We'd go through the fruits and vegetables, past the bread, down the cookie and cereal aisle, past the frozen foods (get me some more chicken-pot-pies and chocolate ice cream), and finally we'd get a couple of those HUGE 32 ounce coke bottles (in a real glass bottle and made with pure cane sugar). On this particular day Mom and my sister were waiting for the Checker to manually ring up all the stuff (she had to be sure to get the Green Stamps, because I was saving up for a real fuel oil lantern). While they waited, I went ahead to study how those sliding doors magically moved open when you stepped on the mat in front of the door. These particular doors slid along the wall in a sideways guillotine fashion. I was experimenting with how much weight and where you applied the weight to open the door. And then I found it. The one place you could stand where it didn't detect a person. Then the door closed shut on me and jammed stuck right down the center of my body. But now even when someone was on the detector mat it wouldn't open it. It was crushing me and I was starting to get scared. I hollered for Mom. She could see people trying to help me, but I was trapped like a rat. Luckily she knew Mr. Willoughby who ran the store from her days back in Mt. Pleasant. He calmly came over and released me. I shot out of that door and into the parking lot like a calf coming out of a squeeze chute. I'm lucky I didn't get run over in the parking lot. 

I still go to that store and over the years I have noticed they have occasionally changed their "detection" from what it was in the 70s. I bet it's a lot safer. And no, since that day, I have not tested the detection of automatic doors. But I'm sure some future engineer has and will and some other engineer is working on a better mousetrap.