Short description

According to statistics, most accidents involving children occur crossing the road. Children are usually not very good at understanding road signs, traffic rules and road surface markings. Children have difficulty judging speed or distance.

To reduce the number of accidents involving children we need:

• • to learn how to influence the behaviour of children, warning of the possibility of a dangerous situation.
• • to install special equipment in vehicles, which would warn the driver of the risk of a dangerous situation (child on the road).

The use of reflective elements, let’s call them flickers, on the clothes of pedestrians significantly reduces the number of accidents. But this is not enough.

What we suggest is a special RFID-Flicker which would be fixed on the child's clothing to improve its safety on the road. Cars equipped with a special RFID sensor can detect the RFID-Flicker in advance at a considerable distance and warn the driver of the danger. These RFID-Flickers can be used for the road safety of school age children.

An Advanced RFID-Flicker (ARF) could be made for teenagers. It could warn not only the driver, but also the child of a danger. It works as follows. Suppose that RFID-sensor of a car detected an approaching ARF (child on the road). The car computer gets the ARF ID and calculates the distance to it. Then, using WIFI (or other radio technology), the car computer sends a signal back to the detected ARF, warning of the danger. Upon receiving the message, ARF warns the teenager of the danger (vibration, light indication, sound signal in headphones). At pressing the car horn by the driver the computer will also send a signal to the ARF. Using Advanced RFID- Flicker can especially help ensure the safety of handicapped children (blind, short-sighted, deaf, etc.) when other methods are not effective.

Modern technology makes it possible to make RFID-Flickers and Advanced RFID-Flickers saleable and cheap. They can be produced as separate devices, or imbedded into mobile users devices (cell phones, PDA, watches, etc.)