Meet the Engineer who designed the Eliminator System
Designing the best Preemption System on the market took an Engineer with specific experience including being a former Firefighter but that isn't all that was required.Years ago Adam Brososky was tasked with leading the team that evolved the design of the Eliminator. Although the Eliminator system dates back to 1998, with GPS and other electronics being more robust and accessible Collision Control Communications wanted to take a step back before going forward.
The company, Adam and everyone on the team calls the Fort Wayne, Indiana area home. Most people outside Fort Wayne don't know it is also home to a multitude of Defense Contractors like Raytheon, ITT Aerospace, BAE Systems and others. Before starting his own engineering firm Adam and many on his team worked for some of these companies.
However Adam also spent several years as a state certified firefighter. He did the year long training and classes. He learned on the job, all while working full time in the defense industry at Northrop Grumman. Although he is a dedicated family man Adam loves to learn. He had just earned his master's degree from Purdue in Electrical Engineering when additionally embarking on the journey to become a firefighter. It is the combination of these experiences that lead to the best preemption system on the market and the most affordable.
During some of the early discussions that detailed our need to have a GPS/Radio based system with great precision and range, the comment from the team was that they were accustomed to designing systems that were capable of military level precision where a lack of precision or performance can have unimaginable consequences.
The design evolution spanned many months from concept to prototypes that included various testing internally and externally. Although he only spent several years on the department. He had gone through a year of training/classes while also learning on the job. He had driven apparatus through congested traffic and intersections. He knew the importance of shaving even 20% of your travel time. He knew that distracted drivers were only going to become a bigger problem. He knew that changing the light to green well ahead of the time was the safest method for everyone.
He also knew that Fire Departments had limited budgets and had to make important decisions on where to spend that budget. He had seen the chaos that can ensue when flipping the toggle switch that lights up the truck. He was also aware of other preemption systems and the two biggest limitations for a department which are COST and PERFORMANCE.
Optical Systems have a range of approximately 2,500 feet. Even the upgraded GPS versions of those systems have a range of 2,500 feet unless you want to add WiFi range extenders further down the road that can get into property rights and power/pole requirements. That is just over 4 tenths of a mile. Cellular systems solve the range problem but bring on two new problems. First is cost, you pay upfront AND monthly for your green lights. Second cellular brings latency, dropped communications and in a large scale emergency the cellular network is the first to go down due to overload of the network.
Adam knew there was a reason the preemption market is often referred to as a "poisoned market". A traffic light takes a fixed amount of time to safely change to green. Traffic takes a fixed amount of time to get moving and out of the way. He knew 4 tenths of a mile wouldn't and hadn't solved the problem to the degree it could be solved. He also knew that $10,000 or $15,000 per intersection wasn't "affordable".
If you, the reader of this, were to call our customers they will say many great things our product, company, and the people. One thing they will say is we listen. We listen to their suggestions, we listen to their feedback and we incorporate that feedback into the system and often we do it very quickly. But listening to first responders isn't just something we do with customers, it started with listening to our Lead Engineer.
However you won't see Adam in your conference room telling you why you should buy it, that simply isn't Adam. Adam loves to learn new things, solve new problems and then move on to the next problem. But he did become a great friend to the people and the company and he does get great enjoyment out of seeing our company and product succeed and change the perception of preemption.
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