School Bus Safety is Need of the Hour | MaxMobility

    Posted By Max Mobility
    On 13-Jan-2016
    • Location Based Services

    When we started developing the MaxMobility Child Tracking Application we knew there was a need for a safety system for school buses. But we didn’t realize the urgency of the situation or how grave the problem had become.

    Parents give a safe environment to children in their homes. They then pick a school and entrust the administration with their little loved ones. However, both of them overlook safety issues in between these two places – their daily commute in the school buses. These issues come to the forefront only when it is too late. Almost, every month newspapers flash grim reminders of this callousness in reports of accidents. In 2012, New York Times reported that while India leads the world in traffic fatalities, very often the victims in these accidents are schoolchildren.

    When we browsed through these reports, we found that the majority of accidents were caused by over speeding and driver’s negligence. Bad roads and unruly traffic are bane for urban India but school authorities can easily take care of vehicle safety by installing a vehicle tracking system.

    That is what a leading school in Kolkata decided to do. Traffic problems and erratic driving had increasingly become causes of concern for the school and the parents. Uncertain and late arrivals, over speeding and missing the bus were some common complaints. The school needed a system that would enable a safe journey for the kids by tracking and monitoring the buses as well as messaging their estimated time of arrival at designated stops.

    After thorough study of the entire issue, MaxMobility deployed MaxTrack, our award-winning location-based solution. Our Child and Bus Tracking Application gave the authorities a chance to be proactive about safety issues by:

    • Installing a GSM-GPS device to track continuously the location of the bus
    • Creating an online interface that the school could access for real-time information on current speed, distance traveled during the day, number/duration/location of stoppages en route and students’ entry and exit locations/ time, attendance records
    • Providing Estimated time of arrival of buses at designated stops/school
    • Providing sms alerts/live and history reports for daily movement summary, specific exception events like over-speeding, panic button alerts – in case of emergency
    • Giving SMS alerts to parents about the time of arrival of the school bus at stops and when it reached the school. Parents can also track the current location of the bus through SMS.
    The Results:

    Besides setting new standards for student safety, the school got an unprecedented control over every aspect of their fleet of buses:

    • Complete visibility of their fleet — Through a user-friendly online interface, the school now tracked and recorded fleet usage and performance.
    • Bus travel safer for kids – Cases of over speeding and rash driving reduced drastically after the solution was deployed. There were no unnecessary detours and undue stoppages as drivers came under scrutiny.
    • Student attendance also came under scanner with generation of automated reports of their boarding, disembarking time.
    • It gave peace of mind to parents who could now text “TRACK” to a number and get current location of the bus. Moreover, they could also get instant alerts when:
    – The bus came to pick up or drop the child – The child reached school – The child left the bus at any stop other than the regular one – The bus had any undue stoppage or took another route – There were emergency situations/rescheduling of buses

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