PennDOT Announces Regional Innovations Challenge Winner

PennDOT Announces Regional Innovations Challenge Winner

4/17/2018-KING OF PRUSSIA

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) today announced
that a
team of students from the Lower Merion School District, Montgomery County
has
been selected as the PennDOT District 6 winner for its inaugural
Innovations
Challenge.

Mentored by Mrs. Holly Golecki, teacher, team members include: Micky
Fairorth,
Aram LaVan, Yiheng Chen, and Will Vauclain.

Since last fall, students have been working hard to solve this year's
challenge, which asked students to look at technologies and innovative
methods,
aside from traditional paid advertising, marketing and social media
channels,
that can be developed in the next five to 10 years to curb unsafe teen
driving
practices.

"PennDOT is committed to promoting safe driving practices through
traditional
media, such as radio, newspaper, television and social media," said PennDOT

Secretary Leslie S. Richards. "With this year's Innovations Challenge, we
wanted students to look at non-traditional methods to foster more
innovative
approaches to address this issue."

The winning regional team's innovation was a machine learning based
analysis
tool on smartphones in the form of a mobile app to safeguard driving teens.

This mobile app would detect real time speed, lane changes and drifts, and
the
level of attention the teen driver has on the road, and send alerts when
unsafe
driving behaviors are detected, all though leveraging existing technology
in
smartphones such as the front-facing camera.

Launched this year, the PennDOT Innovations Challenge is a statewide
competition that challenges teams of students in ninth through 11th grade
to
use their problem solving, creative and strategic-thinking abilities to
solve a
specific real-world transportation challenge.

"Today's high school students are tomorrow's leaders, and there is much we
can
learn from them," says PennDOT District 6 Executive Kenneth M. McClain.
"Our
winning team in the Philadelphia region presented an advanced solution to
the
issue of teenage distracted driving and demonstrated their ability to be
forward thinking and practical, which is exactly what the Innovations
Challenge
is about."

Regional winners of PennDOT's Innovations Challenge will now move on to
compete
in the statewide competition on April 24 in Harrisburg. Winning teams will
present their solution to this year's challenge to Secretary Richards and a

panel of PennDOT judges and a statewide winner will be selected.

Follow PennDOT on Twitter at www.twitter.com/PennDOTNews and like the
department on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/PennsylvaniaDepartmentofTransportation and Instagram at
www.instagram.com/pensylvaniadot.

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