Imagine you’re driving along the highway and you see an electric sign that reads, “79 traffic deaths this year.” Would this make you less likely to crash your car shortly after seeing the sign? Perhaps you think it would have no effect?

Neither are true. According to a recent peer-reviewed study that just came out in Science, you would be more likely to crash, not less. Talk about unintended consequences.

The study examined seven years of data from 880 electric highway signs that showed the number of deaths so far this year for one week each month as part of a safety campaign. The researchers found that the number of crashes increased by 1.52 percent within three miles of the signs on these safety campaign weeks, compared to the other weeks of the month when the signs didn’t show fatality information.

That’s about the same effect as raising the speed limit by four miles or decreasing the number of highway troopers by 10 percent. The scientists calculated that the social costs of such fatality messages amount to $377 million per year, with 2,600 additional crashes and 16 deaths.

(New Scale Robotics: Victor, NY) -- New Scale Robotics has released a new case study video with Orchid Orthopedic Solutions, a medical contractor manufacturer in Bridgeport, Michigan. Orchid uses New Scale’s Q-Span Robotic Gauging System to automate QC inspection of its machined surgical drills.

In the video, Joe Farinella, quality director at Orchid, explains the business benefits of the Q-Span System. These include:
• Realizing immediate savings of more than 50 hours per week of inspection time
• Achieving total gauge repeatability and reproducibility (GR&R) of less than 10 percent
• Deployment in less than a month
• Ability to reassign quality control personnel to higher-value tasks

The Q-Span System meets the strict quality requirements of Orchid Orthopedic Solutions’ customers and regulatory agencies.

Food processors have long sought a safer, more energy-efficient means to convey product with less spillage, breakage, or downtime due to necessary cleaning and maintenance. Although tubular drag conveyors have offered these desired attributes compared to belt, bucket, or pneumatic systems, many in the industry selected the traditional options to move higher volumes or larger-sized products.

Now, however, 8-in.-diameter tubular drag conveyors have become widely available and can almost double the volumes of smaller 6-in. units. This provides comparable volumes and pricing to conventional industrial systems and enables transport of much larger product sizes than previously possible.

(Omnex: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Omnex is hosting the webinar, “Aligning Your Information Security Management System Framework With TISAX Controls” on July 29, 2022, at 11 a.m. Eastern.

To bolster information exchanges and data transfers, many organizations are requiring their external providers to implement an information security management system (ISMS) framework to achieve trust information security assessment (TISAX) maturity certification. Many tiered suppliers have already successfully engaged with Omnex to ensure TISAX project success, and others are preparing to launch their ISMS. Join Omnex for this free webinar to learn best practices to integrate your ISMS with TISAX controls and those provided in the Annex of ISO 27001. Let us work together to ensure that your ISMS adds value and protects your critical organizational assets and those of business partners.

Register for the webinar here.