Using Audio Alerts to Prevent Unsecured Bus Accidents

There is nothing more important than the safety and security of your passengers, operators and the pedestrians you encounter on the street. It’s quite likely that you’re already using Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technology in a multitude of ways to help make traveling more reliable, accessible and safe for all passengers. Throughout your system, ITS technology is likely already providing fleet management, real-time bus arrival predictions, stop announcements, and other features and functions that improve service and help your customers navigate their journey. That’s nothing new. But, what if you could leverage that same technology to further improve safety for your bus operators by providing audible alerts to remind them to engage the parking brake before exiting the bus, ensuring that an unmanned bus can’t roll through your city streets endangering all in its path?

One operator could certainly have used this reminder when he forgot to engage his parking brake before exiting his vehicle. Not only did he suffer significant injuries when his bus began to roll backward and he unsuccessfully attempted to stop it, but the runaway vehicle also caused severe damage to parked cars and property. Luckily, no pedestrians were hurt, but when the local news picked up the story, the agency had a public relations nightmare on its hands.

And, unfortunately, it wasn’t an isolated incident. In 2017, this agency experienced several highly publicized runaway bus incidents. Buses were videotaped rolling downhill, injuring operators and causing massive property damage to vehicles and buildings in their path. How could this happen?

In all cases, the operators had exited their buses to go on break and were following the common practice of walking around the front of the vehicle and reaching in through the driver’s side window to close the doors. This is done all the time as it’s the only way to actually close the doors on the bus to ensure that riders cannot board the unmanned vehicle.

The problem occurs when the operator believes the parking brake is engaged when, in fact, the interlock is engaged while the doors are open. Only once the doors are closed does it become obvious that the parking brake is not engaged and the bus is free to roll. Left in neutral, on a relatively slight incline, the weight of the bus is sufficient to build considerable momentum. The fact that this situation doesn’t happen more often is actually quite remarkable and a testament to the professionalism and diligence of bus operators everywhere.

In this case, Clever Devices partnered with the agency to solve this issue by implementing a proactive audible announcement to serve as a reminder to the operator. When an operator parks the bus without engaging the parking brake, a persistent audible alert is triggered by the system to announce that the “parking brake is off” before the driver can leave the vehicle. The system is designed so the audible alert can be triggered using different parameters, and can play any custom audio announcement desired.

Agencies have a duty to the public and their operators to increase the safety and security of their vehicles by any means available. An unsecured bus that causes an accident can inflict significant damage to life and property and by proxy, the agency’s reputation with its riders.

Clever Devices’ solutions enable you to react to real-time emergencies, reduce accidents and improve the safety and security of your passengers and employees. Learn more about our safety and security solutions here.

Are Pedestrian Detection Systems Really Ready for Transit?

With the recent reports of high failure rates, agencies must rethink their strategies.

Today’s pedestrians are more distracted than ever and represent 16% of all traffic-related deaths annually, a statistic that has continued to grow since 2010. When pedestrians aren’t paying attention while crossing the street, the results can be disastrous. In New York City alone there is a traffic-related injury or death every two hours. Despite increased investments into expensive pedestrian detection systems, AAA has found that this developing technology is still unreliable when it comes to preventing collisions between vehicles and people.

Pedestrian Detection Systems: Unreliable at Best

The statistics are staggering. According to research conducted by AAA, pedestrian detection systems were hampered by all-but-perfect conditions during several simulations. In situations where more than one person was encountered alongside the road at 20 mph, there was an 80% chance of a collision. When encountering an adult in the road immediately after a right-hand turn, none of the test vehicles were able to avoid impact. More alarming still is when children enter the equation: collisions occurred 89% of the time when a child was encountered at 20 mph.

Even in the best-case scenario of a single adult crossing in front of a vehicle traveling at 20 mph in broad daylight, these systems only avoided a crash about 40% of the time. All detection systems tested struggled in low light scenarios and research showed them to be completely ineffective at detecting an adult crossing in front of a vehicle at night.

Making Turning Safer for Everyone

Relying strictly on an expensive, developing, and ineffective technology to prevent traffic fatalities only beckons tragedy and drivers should never depend solely on a detection system to spot pedestrians or cyclists. Driver and pedestrian awareness is the only reliable, cost-effective way to decrease traffic fatalities. TurnWarning™ from Clever Devices is not a detection system. Instead, our technology heightens pedestrian and driver awareness of vehicle turn events through a series of audio and visual reminders. When the system detects that the bus is turning, an audio announcement and flashing lights alert pedestrians that the bus is turning, cautioning them to remain careful and alert. The system can also be configured to audibly remind drivers to check for the presence of pedestrians while turning. Since many bus-pedestrian accidents occur at intersections when a distracted person walks or rides a bicycle into the side of a bus, TurnWarning™ makes turning safer for everyone.  Finally, should detection technology evolve to be reliable, it can be integrated with TurnWarning™ to trigger the system when a pedestrian is detected, providing a more robust and complete pedestrian safety solution.

Stay Focused on the Road Ahead

Bus-related pedestrian fatalities can be a thing of the past for your agency. Let us tell you more about TurnWarning™.

Preventing a Tragedy – The Question Isn’t Will It Happen, it’s When?

October 27, 2017

Every now and again we read about dubious characters or a transportation enthusiast with a love of buses and trains boarding a vehicle and taking it for a ride. In August of 2016, a man boarded a parked Calgary transit shuttle bus while its operator was on a bathroom break and drove it away. That same year, a Staten Island, New York man took off with an empty New York City bus that had been parked at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. In 2017, a TTC bus was stolen from a Toronto garage. The thief took it for a ride through the city before parking it outside his home and retiring for the night. One transit obsessed man with Asperger’s has been arrested over 25 times in the New York City Metropolitan area for boarding and attempting to drive away with buses and trains. Just two months ago in August, a Hawaii County mass transit bus was stolen from the depot and the agency didn’t immediately know about it. In all these cases, the situation ended with an arrest and relatively minor damage to the vehicle.

But, let’s think about this. Let’s consider what could have happened? Forget the fact that without proper training, driving a mass transit vehicle is near impossible; the potential for endangering pedestrians, other drivers and property is very real. But, what if the thief has darker motivations. What if their plan included creating harm to themselves or worse, to others. What if the buses they chose to drive away with were filled with unsuspecting passengers? What if they considered a public bus the perfect weapon?

In September of 2001, plane cockpits didn’t have locks on them. If they had, hijackers would not have been able to overtake the cockpit and use three commercial airliners to slam into the World Trade Center and the United States Pentagon killing thousands. Prior to that fateful day, nobody had really considered the safety concerns of an unlocked cockpit. In the summer of 2016, a terrorist drove a box truck into a crowd of unsuspecting pedestrians who had poured onto the streets of Nice, France to celebrate Bastille Day. The seaside promenade was closed to traffic that day but nobody had given a thought to block the
entrance with anything more than a wooden barricade. 84 people were killed. As France mourned, other cities took notice. This past New Year’s in New York City’s Times Square, every street in the area was blocked off by large 16-ton garbage trucks filled with almost that much sand. Strategically parked, they shielded revelers from prospective rogue vehicles driven by someone with depraved intentions.

Today’s buses have no locks and no keys. Just about anyone can board a bus, start it up and drive away. To think that someday, somewhere an evil character will board a public bus and use it for illicit, depraved activity isn’t farfetched at all. The question is not will it happen, it is when.

At this month’s APTA Expo, we were fortunate to be able to spend a few moments with the U.S. Secretary of Transportation in our booth where she reinforced her earlier general session comments about her commitment to safety and security of public transportation riders. “We are committed to keeping our nation’s transit systems safe, reliable, and accessible,” she had told a packed audience during her earlier remarks in Atlanta.

So, as we think about the world we live in, we need to consider our obligations to protect not only the riders we serve but the public at large as well.  We must find ways to ensure the safety of all those who trust public transportation to get them where they need to go. Using information, foresight and most of all technology, we must be smarter and more cautious than ever before.  It’s our duty to do whatever we can to learn from the unfortunate incidents of the recent past to prevent the tragedy of the future.

Learn how to protect your vehicles from unauthorized use.

Link to Secure Bus Access Video

Link to Secure Bus Access Product Fact Sheet

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