IIID participates in Work Package 1,
Activity 1.3 "Benchmarking and SOA database" and Work Package 5, leading Activity 5.5 "Surrounding
traffic info and warning".
Safeway2school aims to design, develop, integrate and evaluate technologies for providing a holistic and safe transportation service for children, from their home door to the school door and vice versa, encompassing tools, services and training for all key actors in the relevant transportation chain. These include optimal route planning and rerouting for school buses to maximize safety, on-board safety applications (i.e. for speed control and seat belts), intelligent bus stops and bus signs, effective warning and information systems for bus drivers, children, parents and the surrounding traffic, as well as training schemes for all actors.
The project is coordinated by VTI Statens vaeg och transportforskningsinstitut,
Sweden. IIID members Maelardalen University, Eskilstuna,
and Linkoepings University, both of Sweden, are also
contributing.
The first plenary meeting took place in the beginning
of December 2009 in Vienna. First insights reveal problems
with the effectiveness of school bus signs/markings
and the marking of school bus stops.
Project
Website
7th Framework Programme Website
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As IIID is preparing the grounds to develop optimised means to clearly mark school transportation for the surrounding traffic to take notice and act accordingly to enhance safety, a study has been conducted to collect as many depictions of school bus markings (eg shown in the example 1 from Austria), as well as school bus stop signs (eg. example 2 from Sweden).
Summary of the study
A total of 37 countries were covered and 92 examples of signs and pictograms covering: school buses, school bus stops, and “children“ danger warnings as well as other related referents from standards (such as ISO) were considered.
The study´s collection of signs/symbols/pictograms is based on a survey which was conducted to find examples of signs in use, bearing pictograms to identify/signal school buses and school bus stops. The aim of this paper lies in the necessity to have sufficient background knowledge to derive insights for the development of a school bus- and school bus stop pictogram. These are planned to be enhanced for comprehension (understanding) and early discrimination/long distance “legibility”. Furthermore, the pictograms are to be prepared to serve with optimum functionality regardless if used on a conventional sign plate, LED display (VMS) or screen (e.g. of an in-car navigation device).
As it is to be held obvious – due to indications, being, for instance, found in the Austrian practice – that the school bus signs (and often, the school bus stop signs) visual content relate to the depiction of juveniles in the danger warning sign “children” employed in the same country, the scope had to be widened to additionally these signs from as many cultures as possible.
Moreover, to complete a holistic view on the issue, several pictograms of prominent standards and systems were compiled to illuminate state of the art methods to graphically represent the concepts of “children”, “running” and “bus”.
Generally it can be stated that the graphical representation of “children” varies strongly from country to country, even from province to province, and that in the development of these pictograms visual aspects of comprehension, discrimination and conspicuity are not considered adequately.
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Example 1, Austria:
School bus marking
Example 2, Sweden:
School bus stop sign |
