Never Miss Your School Bus Again
As a parent, realizing your child missed the school bus would be one of your biggest horrors, especially in the evening. It’s a dangerous world, and your fears are totally justified. But, more often than not, your child would have missed the bus simply because she failed to notice the school bus leaving.
As a concerned parent, you start thinking. “Isn’t there any way to notify me immediately in case my child misses the bus?” Today’s ever growing technology should be able to find a solution for this one small thing to ensure student safety, right?
Yes, certainly.
GPS Technology!
It was initially developed for military purposes and later became popular through smartphones.
There are 24 GPS satellites circling the earth at any point of time. These satellites help in locating positions with mind blowing precision with the help of RFID tags. The RFID tags would be part of the student ID card which makes it easy to identify individual students.
You can take a look at the video and see what impact a school bus tracking device can have on student safety.
Once a student is identified, various activities of the students such as boarding the school bus, leaving the school bus etc are sent as notifications to smartphones in the parents hands.Smartphones play an integral part in getting the best out of this technology. As people carry smartphones everywhere 24/7, it is easy for schools to reach parents.
Different types of GPS tracking systems are now available on the market. Some are stand alone systems while others come as part of systems that already exist such as the school ERP.
The Rising Popularity of GPS Trackers
This technology has become so popular and effective that in November 2014, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) announced that it is mandatory to install GPS in school buses across the country.
In fact, the atrocious amount of road accidents and other incidents happening every year in India has made GPS tracking systems a necessity for several states.
It’s not just in population that our country is close to China. Each passing hour, 13 people die in road accidents on an average in India. With 1, 30,000 fatalities on road, India have overtaken China as the country with most annual road accidents.
So announcements such as the one recently by Maharashtra Transport minister (GPS trackers are to be made mandatory for taxis and autorickshaws across the state), are not surprising.
GPS Isn’t Just About Identifying Location
GPS technology aids in improving safety not just by providing location information to parents and teachers. It also helps schools to continuously monitor school buses, keeping a tab on speed, traffic, unscheduled stops and more.
By monitoring driving patterns, schools will be able to notice issues such as rash driving. This helps them to take necessary actions on time.
There were a couple of incidents where the school bus was hijacked. Police were easily able to track down the bus and rescue students thanks to GPS tracking device installed in the buses.
Benefits to Schools
Giving importance to student safety by means of GPS systems are advantageous to schools in other ways. For instance, they are able to measure the efficiency of their school bus fleet with the location data. Also, better safety means lesser maintenance to the fleet. All of this on the whole improves the reputation of an institution. After all, who wouldn’t want to send their child to a school with splendid safety and security systems?
Students are the future of our country, and their safety issues should be dealt with utmost seriousness. Let’s hope that technologies such as GPS tracking systems will continue to evolve and provide valuable protection to them.