We know that knowledge and education are key to improving road safety. So we took steps to educate junior students and created a color-recognizing machine for daltonic and blind people.
The ideas
Safety on the roads is a priority issue for our country. Every year Russia loses thousands of its citizens in road traffic accidents. According to the statistics the number of road traffic accidents involving children is increasing from year to year. In Nadym there were more road traffic accidents involving children in 2016 (9) than in 2015 (7).
We brainstormed some elements and topics of road safety and mobility. They were: road signs, road markings on the carriageway, intersections, the value of traffic light signals, the movement of special vehicles, the definition of safe and dangerous sections of the streets, roads in the neighborhood, the value of the signals given by vehicle drivers, rules for the use of public transport, safety while crossing the road, the causes contributing to road accidents involving children/pedestrians, etcetera.
We realized that one of the most important problems on Nadym's roads was road traffic injuries of children. These are often caused by a combination of causes: the pranks of children on the roadway, the condition of the roads, ways of traffic control, the technical state of vehicles, children’s lack of discipline, poor knowledge of traffic rules and the skills to implement them, etcetera. We decided that prevention played a special role in reducing the number and severity of injuries of children on the roads. The areas we explored were varied, ranging from educating children up to creating a color-recognizing machine, a robot-color-recognizer, for daltonic (color-blind) and blind people.
We had a positive experience exploring the topics, and were sure of our conviction that education could change attitudes and behaviors for the better.
The initiatives
We got to work, first planning all the steps of the project. We planned and held a number of initiatives and events aimed at the prevention of children’s road traffic injuries. They were: making a stand on safety behavior for children on the road; an exhibition of drawings; outdoor games for younger students; creating and conducting an interactive quiz game using the “Kahoot!” system and mobile phones; arranging preventive lectures with representatives of the road-patrol service of Nadym; and the creation of a color-recognizing machine, a robot-color-recognizer, for daltonic and blind people.
We worked at reaching two main goals: education of children and creating the color-recognizing machine for daltonic and blind people. First, we made a stand on safety behavior on the road. It included pictures, rules, phone numbers, etcetera. The information on the stand could be changed as needed. The second step was organizing the exhibition of children's drawings on the topic "Safety on the road". Children painted their pictures at school during the brakes and art classes. We chose the best pictures and put them on the wall near our stand. People in uniform are respected by people, especially the young. That's why we invited representatives of the road-patrol service of Nadym. They held some preventive lectures with our schoolmates. We know that children like to play, and the next step of our work was organizing a series of different moving, outdoor and interactive games. Junior students were glad to take part in them. The outdoor and moving games were held in our school gym. They were: "Where we’ve been, we’ll not say what drove show”, "Pass the baton“, "Traffic signals“, "Trucks”, and "Trams”. Interactive quiz games using the “Kahoot!” system and children's mobile phones had questions and tasks on the topic of our project and gave us the opportunity to check the knowledge children achieved during the actions and initiatives.
Simultaneously we worked on the project of creating a color-recognizing machine, a robot-color-recognizer, for color-blind and blind people. The robot-color-recognizer was made of LEGO Mindstorms EV3 with color sensors. We programmed it to recognize the colors of traffic lights. Finally we presented the robot at the district scientific-practical conference, “Start to Science”. It went on to become the winner. As for its future, we won't stop and we plan to transform it into a stationary robot that will be installed outside the vehicle, and to install on the robot a more powerful sensor light so it will be able to determine the colors of traffic lights at a distance of 50 meters and transmit the information received inside the car to inform the driver. Our initiatives and actions were presented on the school website.
The public response to all of the actions has been receptive and positive. In turn, we want to point out that working on this project gave us pleasure, and by working with children we felt a great responsibility for the younger generation.
