The weather is foggy, it is hard to see, and drivers are driving too fast. Brother and sister Tihomir and Tihana Jurić have seen too many traffic accidents in which pedestrians are injured precisely because of such weather conditions, so they decided to act to put an end to it. The result of their efforts to make traffic safer is the Zebra Cross, a "smart armour” that is mounted on the pillars next to pedestrian crossings and uses lights to alert drivers that someone is trying to cross the road, reports Večernji List on January 20, 2019.
"Yes, the system works even when there is fog, snow or darkness, whenever the pedestrian is trying to cross the road but cannot be easily seen for some reason,” explains Tihomir Jurić. With their invention, the team, which also includes Alen Skorić and Matteo Vit, applied to the Zagreb Startup Factory and in December won the first prize worth 160,000 kuna.
“Drivers often cannot see pedestrians, even when the weather is fine. It is in the drivers’ interest to protect the pedestrians, and we have decided to do something that will help them,” explain the brother and sister.
The “smart armour” is mounted on the pillar and has built-in sensors that respond to pedestrians. The post then illuminates the pedestrian, and at the same time turn on the flickering lights that are facing the oncoming cars. They have the fog lights, which can reach the drivers even when the visibility is at its worst. Thus, the lights warn the cars that someone will cross the road and that they should stop.
"Of course, some drivers do not stop even when they see someone standing on a pedestrian crossing, but we cannot teach them the rules of the road. We can only hope that drivers will stop and protect pedestrians,” says Vit, who is in charge of all the software and hardware components of the Zebra Cross.
All team members are entrepreneurs in the IT sector, and they worked on the Zebra Cross alongside other jobs in their companies; however, they recently decided to leave everything and dedicate themselves to the joint project. They are already negotiating with the Zagreb city authorities to launch tests on the streets.
"It is not simple, since we are directly interfering with the current traffic light rules, so we have to talk with the Ministry of Transport. But we have been getting positive reactions, so we hope the Zebra Cross will soon be seen on many pedestrian crossings,” concludes Tihomir Jurić.
Translated from Večernji List (reported by Hana Ivković).
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