Just a few years ago a police officer was shot in the head and killed, while sitting in the drive through at a local White Castle restaurant. I would imagine that each year quite a few such cases occur, not only fatalities, but also injuries. Is bullet resistant glass so expensive that it would be way out of line for police cruisers? How much would it cost to outfit one car (all windows)? Couldn’t someone form an NPO dedicated to helping pay for such a project (perhaps using the distributed supercomputer idea)?
Yes. Well, considering how rare such occurences are, plus the added weight would increase fuel consumption, it just wouldn’t be worth the expense, overall. If it would, police cars would already be so outfitted.
How in the world would distributed supercomputing help pay the cost of outfitting police cars with bullet-proof glass?
Ok, never mind. Here’s a handy hint: When referencing another post, it’s handy to include a link.
Aaaaaaaaand to complete the trifecta, here’s a link:
I don’t know the actual cost, but I imagine that it would be prohibitive. Besides the bullet-resistant material, I believe that the doors would have to be replaced as well (since the material is far thicker than the standard glass windows) and the suspension may have to be improved (for the additional weight).
I’ve never even heard of this being discussed in law enforcement circles. Statistically, very few officers are killed sitting in their cars. The first thing we’re trained to do under attack is get the hell out from behind the wheel!
Like this:
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Someone creates an NPO, with the stated objective of providing the money for converting police cruisers over to the bullet resistant glass (or plastic to address QED’s weight concerns).
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This NPO announces that it will be setting up a national, supercomputer gird, and that you can help by downloading their SETI like program (which will enable your system to contribute to the network/grid).
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Then, once a good number of people are set up to participate and the system is “running” the NPO markets supercomputing services to those who need them. The revenues from these services are used to finance the glass/plastic for the police cars.
Heck, I already give the FOP about $30.00 per year for trash bags, why not help those who are trying to protect me by giving them a small piece of my excess CPU power?
So, I suppose sending all patrols out in APCs is out of the question?
Roland, that’s an interesting idea. I don’t know how useful it would be in the real world: You could only effectively compute certain kinds of algorithms that are amenable to being broken up into small pieces that can be worked on independently. (The SETI Project’s noise analysis is a perfect example: Each node does a suite of analyses on a chunk of data and then sends the results back home. No chunk’s analysis is at all dependent upon any other chunk’s analysis.) If you can’t find an embarassingly parallel algorithm to run, you’re wasting your time in massive communications latencies.
I’d donate my clocks, but I don’t know who’d be buying time.
Here this stuff looks promising in addressing the weight issue:
Consisting of multiple layers of polycarbonate or polycarbonate/acrylic with bonding interlayers, these tough yet lightweight materials offer proven resistance to physical and ballistic attack.
Here’s a link to their site: http://www.sdplastics.com/hygard.html
In addition, I remember my Physics professor talking a couple years ago about how “they” were close to being able to use nanotechnology to more perfectly “align” the carbon atoms in glass into stronger geometric formations. He said that this would create glass that could withstand one hundred and fifty mile per hour winds. Perhaps, this technology (if it now exists) could be adapted to create lighter, bullet resistant glass. Keep in mind that we probably don’t need to stop M-16 velocities (in most cases) stopping a 9mm or 40 caliber round would be sufficient in most cases.
According to this article
Too expensive, too heavy, and not really useful for your average cop.
Actually, if they just replaced the glass with a similar wieght of Lexan, the windows would be rock proof and bullet resistant . Not much more expensive and no heavier.
Doesn’t Lexan scratch and wouldn’t that be bad for the windshield, or any of the windows?
I would try to find statistics on how often police are actually shot at while in their vehicles but I’m too lazy. Let ‘John’ do it. I suspect that it is an insignificant fraction of all the times cops get shot at.
This company http://www.labock.com/english/sv_pak_police.htm has a product with the added advantage of only stopping bullets one way . Thus, police personnel could “fire back” at the bad guys, without leaving the safety of their bullet resistant vehicle. In this case, such technology could prevent deaths/injuries not only from being shot while in the car, but also some mortalities that happen when the police person exits a vehicle to confront an armed assailant.
You’re not thinking about the physics of it properly, First, the bit about glass is wrong - saying that they could make a glass to withstand a wind of X miles/hour is meaningless as a measure of strength. I could make a window now that could withstand a 300 mile/hour wind. Or one which couldn’t withstand a 50 mile/hour wind. It’s going to depend on the area, bracing, thickness, etc, etc.
Second, it’s not the velocity alone that’s doing it.
And finally, if distributed computing could pay for projects like this, people would be donig it. I am unaware of any distributed computing project that has made a profit, let alone broken even. SETI got a lot of CPU cycles - but that did not turn into money. Efforts like OGR and Mersenne are in the same boat. With respect, you are proposing a financial solution that has never been shown in the market to work as a profit-making enterprise.
There’d be very little point in bullet-resistant glass if you don’t make the rest of the car bullet-resistant also. Contrary to Hollywood cliches, hiding behind a car door isn’t going to save you from a bullet.
Heinlein said:
"When someone asks ‘Why Don’t They’, the answer is almost always ‘Money’. "