How It Works...

The Smart Sign can help you...

maintain your car get better gas mileage AND support Denver’s drive for better air.

A tool to raise public awareness about the importance of a well-maintained car. Motorists can waste hundreds of dollars in fuel costs and contribute to the city’s air pollution problems by not keeping their cars well maintained.

People can drive their vehicles by the Smart Sign and to obtain measurements of the carbon monoxide emissions. In less than a second, the Smart Sign flashes a reading of “GOOD,” “FAIR,” or “POOR” to help motorists assess their vehicle’s fuel efficiency and over all condition.

To read more about this please visit The Why Files.

The Smart Sign is located at Speer Blvd. & I-25...

To obtain a reading on you car’s emissions, just drive through from Southbound I-25 to Eastbound 6th Ave.

Only a small percentage of cars are producing most of the air pollution. So, why should we all have to bring our cars in for costly, time consuming emissions testing? Why not just fix the polluting cars. Our remote sensing invention can find them.

Only about one car in every twenty on the road today is responsible for about half of the air pollution produced by cars. That one car may be old and therefore lack modern air pollution control devices. Or it may be a new car in need of a tune-up or with pollution control devices that don't work. Rather than force all owners to have their car's emissions tested each year (or every other year), why not concentrate on the one car in ten that causes most of the pollution?

We test cars as they drive by the remote sensor on a highway entrance ramp. With a light source on one side of the road and a detector on the other, various beams of light can be directed across a road in the path of a car’s exhaust.

As the beams of light pass through a cars exhaust plume, each pollutant there absorbs one of them. The amount of light making it to the detector instantaneously tells how much of each pollutant is in your car’s emissions.

Well, if you use the freeway system, you are going to get measured. If you’re not driving then you will not be measured, but you are also not polluting! We really don’t worry about those cars which are not polluting.

Cars DO pollute. And heavy concentrations of cars in urban areas create air pollution in the form of smog. But, cars also produce tremendous benefits such as convenience and mobility. It will be beneficial to have a way to self-monitor the emissions status of your car.

Set-Up:

Located on the south-bound I-25 exit onto Speer Blvd. (Exit 212A), the set-up of this system looks very simple. As you drive by, you only see the sign! The smart sign gives you a reading of the “health” of your car, but there is a lot you don’t see...

The technology powering the smart sign is located underground in manholes and is directed across the road through a series of mirrors from source to detector.

After you drive your car by the manhole, a computer analyzes the data from the exhaust and then triggers the Smart Sign to inform you of the status of your cars emissions.

With return trips to the Smart Sign you can monitor the "health" of your car and be forewarned of problems in general related to pollution control.

Hope you see a "GOOD" reading in the future!

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This site was last updated March 19, 2007