Citation

Anund A, Renner L, Dukic T, Nikolaou S, Chalkia E, Bekiaris E. Proc. Road Saf. Four Continents Conf. 2010; 15: 184-193.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Conference Sponsor)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Between 1994 and 2001, 361 children were injured or killed during transportation to/from their school in Sweden, whereas 455 were killed or injured in Austria only in 2007 and 97 were killed in Italy in 2005. In a single school bus accident in Greece in 2003, 20 children lost their lives. Different as the above numbers may be, they all tell us one thing: Crashes involving school buses and crashes involving children travelling from/to school are far from negligible and require further efforts to be drastically reduced. SAFEWAY2SCHOOL is an EU-project funded by the 7th Framework launched in September 2009. The aim is to design, develop, integrate and evaluate technologies for providing a holistic and safe transportation service for children, from their home door to the school door and vice versa, encompassing tools, services and training for all key actors in the relevant transportation chain. These include optimal route planning and rerouting for school buses to maximize safety, on-board safety applications (i.e. for speed control and seat belts), "intelligent" bus stops, effective warning and information systems for bus drivers, children, parents and the surrounding traffic; as well as training schemes for all actors. The project innovative systems, services and training schemes will be tested in 4 sites Europe-wide,including north (Sweden), central (Austria), south (Italy) and eastern (Poland) Europe; to evaluate their usability, efficiency, user acceptance and market viability; taking into account the variety in children's transportation to/from school systems among the different European regions as well as key cultural and socio-economic aspects. In order to get an indicative view of the SAFEWAY2SCHOOL system and the basic idea behind, a pre-pilot using an on board system for navigation, route guidance, information about children and communication between buses, bus stop and child has been performed. The pre-pilot utilized off-the-shelf technology, in order to create a driver support system that raises the level of routines in school transportation and facilitates communication between the drivers and the children. Two buses, driven by seven drivers were equipped with the system, comprising data for 130 children. Moreover, two bus stops were equipped with flashing lights, triggered by radio transmitters that the children wore. The evaluations of the system showed that it does raise the level of routines and allow the drivers to supervise the children, in order to take action in case of an emergency. All system modules were frequently used have been evaluated as useful from all users. Children reported feeling more secure with the system running and experienced less stress as a benefit from it. The average speed of other cars was significantly reduced by the flashing bus stops. With a cost of 0.5-2 SEK per school day and child, the system could prevent fatal injuries in school transportation, generating monetary benefits on a societal level.