Lower Merion Students Honored For Safe Teen Driving Efforts

ARDMORE, PA – A group of Lower Merion School District students were recognized for their work to curb unsafe teen driving by PennDOT.

Mentored by LMSD teacher Holly Golecki, the team of Micky Fairorth, Aram LaVan, Yiheng Chen, and Will Vauclain was selected as the PennDOT District 6 winner for its inaugural Innovations Challenge, PennDOT said.

The team is competing Tuesday, April 24 in the statewide competition in Harrisburg.

Winning teams will present their solution to this year’s challenge to PennDOT Secretary Leslie S. Richards and a panel of PennDOT judges and a statewide winner will be selected.

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," Richards said. "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."

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