Young adults 17-25

The aim of my project is to design a portable device or app to detect fast moving objects.

Approximately 2.2 million people globally are vision impaired.

As a vision impaired person, I have difficulty seeing oncoming vehicles and other hazards, such as electric cars or e-scooters.

For these reasons, I developed VIPMOD: Vision Impaired Person's Moving Object Detector.

Vision impaired people are not the only group of people with this difficulty.

People with other access needs, such as mobility disabilities, or people who are hearing impaired, will also benefit from VIPMOD, helping them to live safer and more independent lives.

Classic road safety equipment has always been passive, waiting for drivers to lose control, leave the road and suffer an accident against it. In that moment, they are necessary to contain and redirect the vehicle, as well as to reduce its severity and consequences. However, despite their generalized deployment in our roads, we still face deaths and severe injured.
PLUG&META® technology brings a new paradigm for road equipment, allowing the infrastructure to be proactive, to start talking to users and prevent accidents from happening. It also gathers road safety data and events for the road administration.
It is a digital system that can be integrated both into new or existing equipment, for example guardrails, bridge parapets, noise barriers or acoustic wall cladding for tunnels, crash cushions and others.
This worldwide innovation, patented and fully developed by Metalesa, provides active road safety to infrastructure, that is to say, the connected and smart infrastructure will have the capability to autonomous and continuously identify risks on the road (ex: ice, bad visibility, cyclist/pedestrians/animals on the road, excessive speed...) and activate in real time an adaptative LED signalling system to make drivers aware of the risk, and hence, allowing them to anticipate safer decisions. Thanks to PLUG&META® technology, key variables of risk detection, signalling and data collection can be configured from an open intuitive management platform, called PLUG&META® TRACE.

With our innovative project we want to involve university students in road safety. Slow City is a campaign based on the creation of various short videos made by the students about the benefits of speed reduction in our cities, especially saving lifes. Our main goal is to engage the students, but also the general youth by posting the videos and raising awareness peer-to-peer.

Unsafety is the main reason for people not to cycle. What makes cycling unsafe? It can be due to both objective elements such as inappropriate infrastructure, but also subjective elements such as the behaviour of other road users. To get more people cycling, it is important to locate, identify and address both elements.

Mobiliteit is een hot topic. Iedereen heeft er een mening over. Toch hebben mensen soms het gevoel dat ze onvoldoende geïnformeerd zijn om mee te praten in het mobiliteitsdebat en om mee na te denken over concrete oplossingen voor meer gezonde mobiliteit in hun buurt. Mobiliteitsjargon vormt zo een hindernis voor mensen om volwaardig te kunnen meepraten over een thema dat uiteindelijk iedereen aanbelangt.

Tijdens workshops, inspraakmomenten en begeleidingen met burgers kan je er niet zomaar vanuit gaan dat iedereen mee is met dat mobiliteitsjargon. Woorden als sluipverkeer of parkeermanagement krijgen al snel verschillende invullingen. Daarom besliste Mobiel 21 om enkele moeilijke woorden op een heldere manier uit te leggen in een reeks laagdrempelige en informatieve video’s met de naam ‘Mobiliteit voor Dummies’. Daarin geeft Glenn Godin, medewerker bij Mobiel 21 en verkeersdeskundige, met een grappige draai en de nadruk op duurzame oplossingen, een antwoord op vaak gestelde vragen. In een reeks met 7 verschillende filmpjes legt hij telkens een ander mobiliteitsbegrip op een heldere manier uit. De onderwerpen van de filmpjes zijn: De knip, fietsstraat, verkeer, schoolstraat, sluipverkeer, parkeren en wegencategorisering. Het zijn stuk voor stuk begrippen die vaak ter sprake komen, bijvoorbeeld wanneer gemeenten hun burgers betrekken bij de opmaak van nieuwe mobiliteitsplannen.

‘Mobiliteit voor Dum­mies’ kwam tot stand met de ste­un van ‘All 4 Zero’. Met dat project willen de ver­schil­lende over­he­den in Bel­gië het aan­tal ver­keers­do­den in ons land tegen 2050 terug­bren­gen tot nul. All 4 Zero betrekt burg­ers actief in het ver­beteren van de ver­keersvei­ligheid, onder meer via een nationale enquête en the­ma­tis­che burg­er­pan­els. All 4 Zero moedigt ook lokale ini­ti­atieven aan om hun eigen straat, buurt of gemeente ver­keersveiliger te mak­en. Net daarom is het zo belan­grijk dat iedereen kan meep­rat­en over mobiliteit. En daar draagt onze reeks ‘Mobiliteit voor Dum­mies’ toe bij.

Our main product - a mobile app called OKO - makes every pedestrian light accessible to blind and low vision pedestrians. Cities all over the world struggle with making their pedestrian lights accessible by installing an audible signal. Physical audible signals have multiple challenges: they cost up to €50.000/intersection, they produce a lot of noise pollution and hence neighbours complain, they often brake, it's cumbersome to maintain them, they are not 24/7 operational due to noise pollution, etc.

OKO provides blind and low vision pedestrians with a handheld audible signal through their smartphone. OKO uses the back camera and AI to identify the pedestrian signal status. Differentiable audio, haptic and visual feedback is being used to convey that status. OKO doesn't rely on additional infrastructure to be installed and doesn't rely on a WiFi nor cellular connection. We provide blind and low vision pedestrians to safely cross the street with more ease and confidence. Our technology is game changing the market in many ways.

Problematic Speed for road safety.
Specifically: Excessive speed, that is to say driving at a speed higher than the maximum permitted speed as well as Inappropriate speed, which is defined as driving at excessively high speeds given the traffic situation, infrastructure, weather conditions and/or other special circumstances. Speed is one of the most important causes of road accidents: 10-15% of all road traffic collisions and 30% of fatal injury collisions are the direct result of excessive or inappropriate speed.

An increase in speed by 10 km/h leads to a risk of a fatality of 220% of the initial event, i.e. the risk has more than doubled.

The implementation of infrastructure projects and the identification and rehabilitation of dangerous points on the road network is one of the strategic axes of the RSI.

In a E-77 road axis part, in particular in an area of 4 km of the Chalkida-Psahna road, there has been a high rate of fatal road traffic collisions over the last 20 years due to problematic speed.

The aim of this project was the design of interventions related to infrastructure in order to improve road safety by enabling drivers to control their behaviour.

The road safety challenge is motorists parking their vehicle on footpaths and cycle lanes, blocking access for pedestrians, cyclists, pushchairs and those with reduced mobility. This leads to vulnerable road users such as wheelchair users, the visually impaired, people with buggies, children and older pedestrians not having adequate room to walk safely, potentially forcing them out onto the road. Parking in cycle lanes forces cyclists out into mainstream traffic, where there is an increased risk of a collision occurring.

The book "My Hero" graces the libraries of the 110 schools of Rhodes following a decision by the Board of Directors of the Primary & Secondary School Committee of the Municipality of Rhodes. The goal is to adorn the libraries of all schools in the South Aegean Region.
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I feel proud because I managed to write a book starting with my Hero who returns to Rhodes who meets his friends, operators, the Prime Minister of his country to talk about the human lives that are lost in the streets and with the aim of being read and for its readers to know the causes of traffic accidents, for my country, for the Strategic Road Safety Improvement Plan in Greece, for Europe, for World Victims' Remembrance Day, for supporting victims and everything about traffic accidents and how they can be reduced.