Dear developers, designers, and everyone who have an interest in our project : Thank you !
To imagine and work on such an app we were inspired by real people's problems. We hear everyday people complaining about the hassle that it is for them to make sure their children have a safe ride to school. We went through articles that try to explain to parents how they could teach their children how to use public transportations. But this cannot actually be it. Parents are still worried whenever their beloved children take a bus. This is why we thought of developping Safedrop.
The technology we worked on is not invasive since the app users are the parents and their goal is not to track their children. It rather is to follow their bus ride, through sensors that would be installed in the bus and in the child's card. We could have used the GPS technology in order to litteraly track down kids but we refused to go this far. Even though this technology is well known and widely used in some countries such as Canada in order to track pets, we decided not to use such a technology because our kids are not pets. Using such a tracking device, installing it in children's bus cards would have raised so many concerns : user consent, privacy and of course a real risk of misuage. Such a tracked card could have been used by malicious people to track down their husband, wife, friends, colleagues without the person being aware of it.
To grow further, Safedrop could actually be exported first to French and European biggest cities before being implemented in other wealthy countries. The smart card could also be a strong tool that can see its use expand beyond bus rides. We could actually equip train companies or other transportation means because we know that children use different means to go to class. The bus is thankfully not the only option at thand. Tramways, long-distance buses, train, high speed trains are options that could be considered. Children actually also travel each year by hundereds of thousands by themselves in France, moving from one city to another one. This situation could actually be a real opportunity for Safedrop.
It's your turn, get and up and get moving!