AROUND THE JEWISH WORLD Israeli scientist seeks cure for high rate of road deaths

HAIFA, Israel, July 12 (JTA) — A possible cure for Israel’s high rate of road fatalities may have its roots in a click. When he used to drive from Boston to Albany, N.Y., Simon Cohen recalls, he would hear a clicking sound as his car wheels rolled over the tiny cracks separating the concrete blocks that make up the interstate highway. “I knew something could be done with those clicks,” says Cohen, an Israeli who was studying at MIT. Now, the Israeli engineering student turned entrepreneur has developed a computerized system to enforce traffic laws — and he hopes to save lives in a country where more than 500 people die each year in car accidents. The patented system works by embedding two sensors in the road, about a yard apart, and linking them to a computer at a police station. The sensors can detect the speed of a moving vehicle and determine if it is tailgating. When the sensors record a moving violation, a camera on a pole near the sensors takes a picture of a vehicle’s rear, including the license plate. Cameras are now used at intersections in some U.S. cities to try to catch drivers who run red lights. But those systems, Cohen says, require someone to collect the film — and tickets come in the mail weeks later. His product, says Cohen, integrates the sensors and the software, enabling the whole system to run automatically and issue tickets almost immediately. Few entrepreneurs have the financial resources to turn their technological ideas into marketable products. But with the help of an incubator for business start-ups run by an Israeli university and with support from the Israeli government, Cohen’s innovation is about to be hatched. The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel’s leading engineering school, established its incubator in 1991, to assist some of the many Russian scientists who were immigrating to Israel to develop their ideas into high-tech products. The Technion Entrepreneurial Incubator Company Ltd. later opened up to other Israelis and, over the past seven years, more than 40 companies have been born there. “The incubator system is not a minor factor in the success of start-ups in Israel,” says Ami Lowenstein, who runs the incubator. A project accepted by the Technion incubator must pass muster with the Office of the Chief Scientist, a division of Israel’s Ministry of Trade and Industry that grants $300 million a year to high-tech start-ups. Some 25 other incubators exist around the country. There is space for as many as 21 projects at the Technion incubator and each one can stay for two years. Currently, there are 17 start-ups at the incubator’s Haifa facility. “We dedicate a lot of time and energy to help the entrepreneur,” says Lowenstein. Emphasis is placed on counseling entrepreneurs in marketing and raising capital, skills that high-tech innovators in Israel generally lack. Cohen, a graduate of the Technion, spent several years in the United States, first at MIT and later working at General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y., before returning to Israel. After nearly two years in the incubator, Cohen’s small company, Tracon System Ltd., is getting ready to leave and venture out on its own. He is looking to market the $65,000 per unit traffic enforcement system in Israel and in foreign countries as well, believing that it would be especially useful to monitor vehicles in school zones and at intersections. Meanwhile, Israeli police are training over the summer to use the Tracon system at its current test site, located on a heavily traveled highway between Haifa and the industrial town of Yokne’am. Some 30,000 vehicles travel that road each day. Cohen says the system could potentially issue up to 2,000 tickets a day from that site alone. Police officers, reviewing the computer files, key in the license plate numbers before the system issues the tickets. Such human intervention is unnecessary for the system’s operation, says Cohen, but is required by Israeli police to avoid errors. With ticketing expected to begin Sept. 1, Cohen admits that he does not expect to be the most popular person in Israel. Just the same, he hopes that his product will curtail one of the leading causes of death in his country.