After Om Agarwal’s cousin died in India, when it took paramedics 14 hours to respond a car crash, he decided there must be an easier way to notify emergency services of a collision.
For more than a year, the 15-year-old Grade 10 student at Halifax’s Citadel High School has been spending his afternoons and weekends developing a tool to quickly alert EMS when a crash occurs.
“I’ve read several papers that claim one in 10 deaths could actually be prevented if some automatic notification system like this was implemented,” he told CTV Atlantic on Monday. “What I basically want to do is help people save lives.”
Om’s invention is called the Automotive Collision Detection Network and has already attracted the attention of the federal government.
He recently received and accepted an invitation from Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan to showcase his project on Parliament Hill, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Om took the minister up on her offer and met with Trudeau in Ottawa last month.
“I want to help people with my potential,” Om said. “I don’t want to waste it with all these resources available in Canada. I’m very lucky to be part of this society where innovation is at the cutting edge.”
The innovative teenager plans to continue working on his project to make it more efficient in terms of cost and materials. He said he hopes to take the invention to market next year.
With a report from CTV Atlantic’s Allan April
