A pilot project in New York City will feature a school bus outfitted with surround cameras, near-miss AI analysis, and in-cab alerts to improve safety around the school bus.
The School Bus of the Future is inspired by last year’s Together for Safer Roads (TSR) Truck of the Future program but adapted and specialized for school buses operating in urban scenarios. TSR is a coalition of companies, city governments, and community stakeholders and partners on the pilot with contractor New York School Bus Umbrella Service (NYCSBUS) and telematics provider VisionTrack.
According to a press release, “TSR’s original Truck of the Future program sought to address the issue of blind zones in commercial trucks by installing Vulnerable Road User (VRU) Detection Systems on fleet vehicles, providing drivers with enhanced visibility and real-time feedback on potential near misses.”
The VRU technology, developed by VisionTrack, utilizes AI-powered cameras to detect pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists around the vehicle and was installed on trucks from the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, NYC Parks and an AB InBev’s subsidiary in Mexico City.
“We saw that the [Truck of the Future] was able to successfully reduce safety risks for commercial vehicles,” said Karunya Sabapathy, head of communications for NYCSBUS, adding that the goal for the pilot school bus project is to improve pedestrian safety and increase visibility for drivers.
The School Bus of the Future pilot program will evaluate speeding, harsh driving, VRU alerting, and video triggers to determine how these integrated systems are enhancing road safety.
“The program will also include managers and driver surveys to assess their view of the technology, any additional distractions created, and how best to roll out these systems in a high pedestrian and micromobility urban environments,” the press release adds.
Sabapathy said that because many city school buses transport students as required by their Individualized Education Program (IEP), utilizing these technologies on the school bus can greatly improve the safety of schoolchildren.
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For the current project, three school buses will be outfitted with the technology. Sabapathy noted that NYCBUS prides itself on being data-centric and using data to inform a lot of operating decisions.
“One of the unique features of the School Bus of the Future program is that it provides real-time data to drivers as well, so they’re able to use that data to inform their decisions,” she explained, adding that an intent is to identify trends and behaviors using the camera technology. “…We really want to closely analyze and see just how effective this technology is in cityscape programs.”
She said that the technology will be configured and modified to meet the needs of New York City. For instance, she said pedestrians are prevalent across all five boroughs, sometimes walking closely on the sidewalk or in the street itself.
“We have to uniquely configure the parameters of the AI detection to make sure that the bus is not constantly beeping,” she said, noting that the most useful use cases of the technology need to be considered. “We’re trying to figure out how to make this application useful and viable for this [urban] environment.”
