Colorado High School DECA Club Deploys Driver Safety System To Monitor Peers' Driving Habits

  • By Tim Sohn
  • 01/07/13

A Colorado high school marketing club is using a driver safety system to monitor students' driving habits.

Several juniors in DECA at Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, CO, used the Realtime Operational Vehicle Reporting System (ROVR), developed by Cartasite, for a six-week research project during which they looked at their peers' driving habits. The initiative, which is part of Cartasite's "Safe Drivers Safe Roads" program, allows participants to use real-time monitoring to evaluate factors such as rapid acceleration, hard-breaking incidents, and speeding.

According to the company's Web site, "Cartasite's 'Safe Drivers, Safe Roads' campaign reaches out to communities where oil and gas operations exist to promote better relations and awareness about the industry through reducing accidents among teen-age drivers in those communities. Selection criteria is based on one of the following areas of strategic focus: safety, education, environment, or health."

How it works is, the ROVR black box device plugs into the on board diagnostic (OBD) port, which is located next to the steering column in all vehicles. It keeps track of movements that would reflect distracted or aggressive driving. The data collected in the device is then developed into a scorecard using algorithms.

The scorecard, which includes charts and graphs, is emailed to the driver on a weekly basis and shows patterns of risky driving habits. Scorecards include overall score, hard-braking, fast acceleration, and overspeed categories. Accompanying the scores are explanations of how the driver compares to the group average and the causes of the driving habits.

"We thought we might be able to use the same approach with teen drivers that Cartasite has taken with commercial fleets," said Keaton Skudneski, a Cherry Creek junior and leader of the DECA team that deployed the ROVR. "Our hope is that we can get kids to drive more safely by providing them with feedback about their driving. Cartasite not only gave us the ROVRs to use for this project, they also funded a 'Safe Drivers Safe Roads' reward program."

Cherry Creek High School, located outside of Denver, has an 80-acre campus and more than 3,700 students in a preschool, 43 elementary schools, 13 middle schools, and seven high schools. DECA is a club that includes junior-level and senior-level students interested in marketing.

For more information about ROVR, visit cartasite.com. To learn more about Cherry Creek High School, go to cchs.ccsd.k12.co.us.

About the Author

Tim Sohn is a 10-year veteran of the news business, having served in capacities from reporter to editor-in-chief of a variety of publications including Web sites, daily and weekly newspapers, consumer and trade magazines, and wire services. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @editortim.

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