The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is seeking to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to work with a safety-equipment manufacturer to design, test, and evaluate the marketability of the Silent 911 Dialer, a personal safety system for taxi drivers and other workers who work alone. This system is being developed by a NIOSH safety research project. The goal of this project is to improve the safety of taxi drivers by bringing the Silent 911 Dialer into the marketplace. This announcement is a business opportunity in that the partner chosen will share expertise with NIOSH researchers toward making the Silent 911 Dialer a viable and profitable piece of safety equipment. The Taxi Services sub-sector has the highest homicide rate among all sub-sectors. In 2004, the Taxi and Limousine Service industry had 37 occupational homicide victims with a homicide rate of 18.2/100,000 workers (number of workers: 203,000), compared with 551 homicide victims and a homicide rate of 0.396/100,000 workers in all U.S industries (number of workers: 139.3 M). All of these 37 homicide victims were employed in the Taxi Services sub-sector. Two hundred and eighty-seven taxi drivers were murdered at work between 1980 and 1989 and 510 more were murdered between 1992 and 1998. Taxi drivers are also victims to non-fatal assaults (184/1,000 workers between 1992 and 1998, third highest among the sub-sectors). Safety measures must be implemented to protect taxi drivers and other lone workers from occupational assaults and homicides. The objective of this project is to develop a low-cost wireless emergency dialer for the taxi services industry (NAICS 48531), in order to enable them to silently communicate with the rescue unit and/or colleague/family members of their emergency status when they face the danger of assault, robbery or murder. The following are the basic concepts of the Silent 911 Dialer system: * The dialer device consists of a docking station with a size similar to a cigarette pack and a wireless-trigger with a size similar to a car-keyless-door-control pad. * The wireless-trigger has an emergency button and a warning button with different shapes, and a silent vibrator on its panel. The trigger can be mounted on a taxi-driver?s knee, toe, or in a nearby secret place. * The docking station connects with a cellular-phone and can be placed in a hidden place in a taxi-cab. * The Trigger communicates with the docking station via a radio frequency (RF) transmission. * Faced with danger, the driver can silently click the emergency-button on the trigger, which transmits a RF signal to the docking station, to activate the cellular-phone. The cellular-phone dials an emergency number, sends a pre-recorded message, enables the built-in assisted-Global-Positioning-System (GPS) in the phone, and/or triggers an external visual alarm. * With less dangerous situations, the driver can silently click the warning-button on the trigger to silently activate the cell-phone to dial a number to let a colleague/family-member monitor the taxi-cab situation. * The rescuer and colleague/family member can silently communicate with the driver by pushing their phone digit pad. As the cell-phone receives the phone digits, it passes the digits to the docking station, which translates the digits to the correspondent message and transmits the message to the trigger. The trigger passes on the message to the driver via the vibrator. The driver receives the message by feeling the vibration patterns on the trigger. * The dialer cost (not including cellular-phone) should be lower than $100 or even not to exceed $50 if it is possible. * Optionally, the trigger may have a special button to activate other radio-frequency controllable safety measures inside/outside the taxicab, such as external emergency visual sign, partition window, door windows, and door locks to further protect the taxi driver or other workers. We hope that the widespread use of this low-cost device will eventually reduce occupational assault and homicide rates in the taxi-services industry and other industries. The project is currently in the system development phase. Electronic circuits and software/firmware development is underway. The whole system development is scheduled to be completed in early 2008. Candidate companies, which appear to provide the most promise of meeting the requirements listed below, will be considered based on their capability to complete the research and development needed to bring the Silent 911 Dialer into commercial production. This announcement does not obligate NIOSH to sign an MOU with any presented company. NIOSH reserves the right to establish a partnership based on engineering analysis/evaluation capabilities found under this announcement or other searches, if determined to be in the best interest of the government. The Silent 911 Dialer Commercialization Capabilities Parameters: (Companies should try to meet as many of these requirements as possible, but highly innovative solutions without testing are not discouraged from presentation or response.) (A) Provide significant intellectual, engineering, and technical expertise in manufacturing personal safety/security equipment. This would include defining the cost and usability needs of the personal safety/security equipment market. Also, assistance will be given in setting realistic product cost objectives and providing suggestions on how the Silent 911 Dialer can achieve product cost goals - Required; (B) Fabricate prototypes for test and evaluation - Required; (C) Provide expertise to NIOSH in designing and conducting field evaluations; (D) Review testing methods and recommend appropriate, new testing criteria; and (E) Review test results and recommend design modifications. NIOSH is seeking an innovative partner to address these major areas. A company that is qualified and currently producing electrical personal protective equipment is highly desired. However, past testing and design of equipment similar to Silent 911 Dialer is not required. If prior testing has been performed the test information and results should be provided. Interested parties responding to this request should provide detailed information regarding capabilities, test results, and cost data. Presentation material may consist of literature, electronic presentation, or video. (Samples and data provided to the government as part of this announcement will not be returned to vendors following the completion of this project.) Vendors may be offered the opportunity to meet with representatives of the project team following a review of all submitted data. Data and/or product samples must be delivered to NIOSH within two weeks (10 business days) of the closing of this announcement. Although every effort will be made to consider all information received, the government will not be obligated to evaluate information received after the two week period. If any data are to be excluded from exchange with any of the project participants, a statement of that fact shall be included by the vendors with a statement of propriety. Presentations from interested vendors are optional but encouraged. The government has identified January 8th and 9th, 2008 for these presentations to be conducted. The Government reserves the right to identify an alternate meeting date if those identified are not viable for one or more interested vendors. Please send literature to: Shengke Zeng, Project Officer, or John R. Powers, Jr., Team Chief, CDC/NIOSH, MS/G800 1095 Willowdale Road, Morgantown, WV 26505 Phone: 304-285-6103 or 304-285-6219, Fax : 304-285-6047,
[email protected] or
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