I popped open a can of Coke and sat down on the floor. While casually browsing Instagram, I suddenly heard a machine noise. At first, I assumed it came from a neighbor’s workshop—after all, our workshop is in an old industrial zone with poor sound insulation.
But that thought quickly faded as the sound grew louder and closer, followed by abrupt impact noises.Remember the angle grinder I mentioned earlier?
Yeah. It was coming straight towards me.
I only remember screaming at the top of my lungs until the grinder got wedged between a steel beam and the floor, finally coming to a stop. I didn’t feel anything at first, and thought, “Thank God, I’m fine.”Yeah. It was coming straight towards me.
But then I stood up—
and that’s when I realized it had cut through both of my legs.
and that’s when I realized it had cut through both of my legs.
Because I was alone at the workshop—around 8:00 PM—I had no choice but to call the emergency hotline, 112. But they were unable to dispatch an ambulance. My vision began to darken, and that’s when I told myself,
“Gunes, either you save yourself, or die right here.”
“Gunes, either you save yourself, or die right here.”
With that realization, I began crawling toward the street. Shortly after, I saw headlights from an approaching car—but it drove right past me. It was deeply demoralizing, but I kept moving toward a busier area. That’s when I saw another car. Two gentlemen got out of the car and rushed to my side, helped me into their vehicle, and asked which hospital to head to. Before answering, I asked them to first shut off the circuit breaker and lock the workshop—both to prevent any potential burglary and to avoid electrical hazards from the still-jammed angle grinder.
After that, we headed to a public hospital— and I fainted there due to blood loss.
After undergoing CT and X-ray scans, we discovered that the grinder had caused far more extensive damage than I initially thought.
Image 1: Photo taken inside the vehicle of the two gentlemen.
Image 2: X-ray image of the injury.
The surgery went surprisingly well, and I recovered within eight months. Now, I can use my legs just as I did before.
But questions lingered in my mind: why was the emergency hotline unable to dispatch an ambulance to me in time? What if someone else experienced a similar situation but fainted on the spot instead of crawling to the street? What if someone dies simply due to inefficiency?
I couldn’t shake these thoughts. Then, a realization struck me: ambulances lose significant time at traffic lights, even when other vehicles try to make way. If there were no red lights, this delay wouldn’t exist. But removing traffic signals entirely would be unrealistic—it would lead to chaos and accidents.
I considered the idea of replacing intersections with roundabouts everywhere, but that was both expensive and time-consuming for municipalities to implement.
So I returned to my original idea—with a twist:
What if there were no red lights; only for emergency service vehicles?
That, I realized, could be achieved through clever engineering and algorithmic control.
What if there were no red lights; only for emergency service vehicles?
That, I realized, could be achieved through clever engineering and algorithmic control.