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Kumar S.
Sharma, Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Manitoba
with
Marcy
Markusa CBC Radio Winnipeg
On April
9th, 2009 I spent approximately 2 hours driving around, in the CBC
truck with Marcy Markusa of CBC Radio Winnipeg, in a quest for the most
frightening potholes in Winnipeg.
We drove for 2 hours around several of the reportedly bad areas in the city.
An accelerometer (a common semiconductor chip, used in cameras and cell phones
to sense orientation) was mounted on the dashboard. The device was set up to
provide a signal that was proportional to the vertical acceleration of the
dash board. I felt that this would be a fair measure of how much the truck
was being bumped up and down by the potholes. The signals it produced were
recorded on a laptop PC through the microphone input using sound recording
software. The recordings, obtained during a 1 to 3 min drive over each
street, are shown in the pages that follow. The analysis looked at three
indicators: the instantaneous peak level, the maximum level averaged over a
50 ms interval and the long term average level. The bar graph shows the
streets in order of their average ranking from all three of these criteria.
Also shown for each street, are the scores in each of these categories.
It is
difficult to be independent from several subjective factors:
•
The speed at which the vehicle is driven changes the feel of the
potholes.
•
The suspension of the vehicle and the size of the wheels also change
its response.
•
The driver must resist their natural sense of preservation and force
themselves to hit the pothole rather than instinctively avoid them.
•
Through out the experiment we had feelings of photographers remorse: -Oh!
That was a good one. -We should have recorded that one.
Clearly,
the area to the southwest of Confusion corner bounded by Corydon, Hugo and Pembina Highway
was the worst we encountered. My apologies to the nominators of the region
near Ness Avenue
and Century Avenue but your “best stretch” had been closed to traffic for
repairs. Kudos to the city repair crews, most streets were pretty good. Marcy
Markusa was an excellent Safari Guide.
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