Student transporters in three Iowa school districts are testing new technology that may offer added protection to children in the “danger zone” around school buses. The Janesville Consolidated School District was the first to install child detection sensor systems on its buses in recent weeks, in response to a tragedy that occurred about a year and a half ago.
Fifth-grader Justin Bradfield was hit and killed by his own school bus near Janesville in October 2011. After exiting the bus, the 11-year-old dropped an item and stopped to pick it up, but the bus driver didn’t see him. Soon after the incident, Janesville student Emily Halbach hatched a school project with the idea that motion sensors around school buses could prevent similar tragedies in the future.
The project grew into the Smile BIG Foundation, named after Justin’s “brilliant” smile. The foundation has raised thousands of dollars to cover the cost of the sensor systems and worked with the Iowa Department of Education’s school transportation division to launch the pilot.
State Director Max Christensen told STN the pilot project began earlier this year and continues through May. Three school districts — Janesville, Mason City and Spencer — are testing two different sensor systems, the Student Detection System (SDS) by Rostra and the Safe Zone (formerly CARE) system by National Patent Analytics Systems. Christensen learned about the second sensor system at the NAPT Convention and Trade Show in Memphis, Tenn., last fall.
“We are running two different systems on the buses so we can compare them side by side,” he explained. “Typically we need to have at least five school districts in a pilot project. With this project, since we’re testing two different systems, we’re going with three districts.”
After the tragedy occurred, the Bradfield family and a group of Janesville students presented him with information on student detection sensors, Christensen recalled, in the hope that they’d be installed on all district buses. Yet he told them he had to follow protocol and first test the product per Iowa’s pilot project requirements.
For this project, sensors were placed in several, hard-to-see areas around each school bus, such as by the wheel, that trigger an alarm if they detect a child within four feet of the vehicle. The SmileBIG Foundation selected the Rostra front and rear motion sensor system, which uses reflected radar waves to detect a “target” (the child) in the danger zone. If motion is detected, an alarm sounds to alert the driver, who can also view the target’s location on an LED screen.
Christensen said the Safe Zone Inc. system incorporates Doppler radar and uses five sensors, as opposed to 10, to cover a wider area around the bus. The danger zone is generally defined as the 10-foot area surrounding the school bus where students are most vulnerable.
At the end of the school year in May, officials at three participating school districts will fill out comprehensive datasheets to provide feedback and compare the two systems’ efficacy, and then submit them to Christensen.
“It’s up to me and the Maintenance and Inspection Council to look at the results to determine if this is something we want to approve or not. If the system is only working, say, 50 percent of the time, we probably won’t approve it. Because if districts start using it, they’re going to expect it to work,” he stressed. “The SmileBIG project’s eventual goal is to make it required equipment on every school bus in Iowa.”
Christensen added that he prefers this type of equipment to remain optional because of its high cost. He pointed out that a bill to require child detection systems on every bus in the state (HF 188) died in the House about two weeks ago.
“I believe in making buses safer, of course, but if you start requiring all these new things, you run the risk of pricing them out of the market, and then no one can afford to buy new buses,” he said.
“We couldn’t back the bill because we don’t know yet if this equipment works. It’s like putting the cart ahead of the horse.”
