Safer, door-to-door transportation for school-goers
Members of the 'Integrated system for safe transportation of children to school' (SAFEWAY2SCHOOL) project took into account the varied forms of transportation to and from different school systems across Europe, as well as important cultural and socioeconomic aspects. Their aim was to design, develop, evaluate and integrate technologies for more comprehensive and safe transportation services for children. This entailed evolving a door-to-door perspective, with tools, services and training targeting all involved. Employing a user-oriented approach, the project partners sought to relate user needs to the system being developed, and then define system requirements accordingly. The requirements were grouped into functional blocks covering safe route planning, information and warning, bus driver information and notification, and training and education. Other considerations included rerouting school buses, on-board safety applications (e.g. seat belts) and intelligent bus stops. The resulting system architecture produced hardware and software tools for, among others, localisation, route planning, navigation, communication between vehicles and road, a vehicle-based system supporting bus drivers, a vulnerable road users (VRU) unit, and training schemes. All tools, technology and software were evaluated considering technical, security and user-oriented points of view. Evaluated at five pilot sites in Austria, Poland and Sweden, with a simulator experiment carried out in Germany, system results were positive, indicating cost-effective solutions and a high acceptance for the overall approach. SAFEWAY2SCHOOL's holistic approach to safer transportation of Europe's school-going children has provided a solid foundation on which to continue future work in relation to standardisations and policy. Project work offers benefits all round: for children, parents, teachers, bus drivers and all on-road transport users.
