SAFEWAY2SCHOOL is an EU-project with the 7:th Framework. The project starts 1 of September 2009 and is scheduled to end in August 2012.

The aims are 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.

SAFEWAY2SCHOOL includes 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.

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 traveling from/to school are far from negligible and require further efforts to be drastically reduced.
 
The project innovative systems, services and training schemes will be tested in 4 sites Europewide, 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 very different children’s transportation to/from school systems across the different European regions as well as key cultural and socio-economic aspects.

List of beneficiaries: VTI, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (coordinator), Amparo Solutions, Fleetech AB, Swedish Road Administration, University of Linkoping, Malardalen University (Sweden), Center for Research & Technology Hellas/Hellenic Institute of Transport (Greece), National Institute for Transport and Safety Research (France), University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy), University of Stuttgart (Germany), Motor Transport Institute (Poland), International Institute for Information Design (Austria), Conncept Swiss GmbH (Swiss) and Austrian Road Safety Board (Austria).

To visualize parts of the 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 done in Sweden.

This system, including a bus, is demonstrated at the Experience Park at ITS World Congress in Stockholm.

Information and results from this study, “Smart Safe School Bus – a pilot study in Kristianstad”, is also found at www.vti.se/safeway2school.

For more information:
Anna Anund, researcher, VTI and coordinator for Safeway2school, +46706759368
Helena Sederström, Communication Director, VTI, +46708832711