W
ith the widespread adoption of smart- phones, distracted driving has reached crisis proportions. In some jurisdic- tions, distracted drivers now cause
more death and injuries than drunk drivers. I was shocked and alarmed to learn that over 95,000 motorists endangered the lives of school children by illegally passing stopped school bus- es in a single day in the U.S., according to a new National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS) 2019 survey. Extrapolating this to an average 180-day school year means that there could be at least 17 million violations a year. It is very likely that the num- ber is much higher, as only about a quarter of all school bus drivers nationwide participated in the voluntary count. This is deeply concerning. Passing vehicles cause an estimated two-thirds of school bus loading and unloading fatalities. So how can school districts improve safety, given the rise of distracted driving incidents? One solution is technology—more specifically artificial intelligence (AI). It’s what drives the promise of autonomous vehicles. While we can’t imagine school buses of the future without at least one adult on board to manage student be- havior—and we don’t want to—certainly a greater automation of school bus route service can ad- dress many issues the industry currently faces.
Preventing School Bus Tragedies Mobile video surveillance that is used to
capture the license plates of illegally passing vehicles for law enforcement purposes has been on the rise in recent years. But this won’t prevent actively injuries and fatalities. Safe Fleet, for example, has built a system for school buses to address this crisis. Using radar, AI, sensors, high-definition cameras and predictive analytics, the system measures the speed of ap- proaching vehicles in either direction and predicts if a vehicle is going to illegally pass the bus, notes Chris Akiyama, the vice president of school buses at Safe Fleet.
The radar detects if a vehicle is traveling at a speed that indicates it won’t stop for the school bus that is flashing its lights and extending its stop arm. It sets off audio and video alarms that warn the driver and children of the impending danger. A pre-recorded message also warns the children not to cross the road. Safe Fleet calls this the Predictive Stop Arm. The system is even equipped with high-defini- tion cameras to record the incident and capture the license plate of the car that illegally passed the bus.
A half-dozen school districts, including
Clark-Pleasant School Corporation in Indiana, are piloting the technology. Safe Fleet demon- strated how the system works during the STN EXPO Indianapolis in June.
When a school bus is stopped next to the curb,
children who are playing nearby could be in danger of being struck by the bus, so Safe Fleet also developed video-based AI that detects when children are in this zone and alerts the driver. Only when the area is clear of students, does the system give the driver the go-ahead to pull away. Importantly, the system is so sensitive that it can tell the difference between a child and an empty stroller. Many school buses already have video camer- as installed inside to capture student behavior problems. Drivers who have to focus on the road, traffic and safety, can’t simultaneously be sorting out student behavioral problems. Technology can also be used to detect unsafe
driving, with alarms being triggered by harsh braking, sharp turns, fast acceleration and speeding. Any driver event can be captured and uploaded for review and coaching. These types of technologies will likely be embedded in new school buses, which should substantially improve safety and reliability.
Collision Avoidance Student safety is an overriding concern of the
industry, parents and schools. The industry has a great track record, but I believe there is always room for improvement. Collision avoidance capabilities, such as warn-
ing when another vehicle is on a trajectory for collision, lane departure alerts, and even sensors to warn when a driver’s eyes are closing due to drowsiness, all exist now because of declining technology costs.
Emergency braking is another example. I was
recently in the passenger’s seat driving with a friend. The car in front of us stopped suddenly, and our car braked sharply without involvement of the driver. This $700 option saved my friend a $3,000 fender bender and maintained his perfect driving record for his insurance. We are eventually going to see more automat- ed functions like these as standard features in new school buses. At this point these features are mostly optional, so they require addition- al expenditures. However, as the cost of these technologies decline, they will simply be in- cluded in the price of base models in the next five to 10 years.
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