MOBILE SAFETY STREET

                           Taking Safety Instruction to Children through Interactive Vehicles

      UMass Memorial Center, the largest non-profit hospital located in central Massachusetts, is one of 44 sites involved in the national injury free coalition for kids. Each site, works to create hospital-based, community-orientated programs driven to prevent injury to children through efforts in research, education, and advocacy. UMass reached out to Turtle Transit to design Mobile Safety Street, a program leveraging two interactive vehicles, which will travel to public elementary schools, national community events, and educate children about important safety practices and behaviors.

     Turtle was faced with the challenge of designing a mobile program that could easily interact with children, while at the same time draw excitement to participate in the Safety Street curriculum. UMass worked with Turtle and designed a custom 16’ educational trailer. It was fabricated with an absolutely unique design, attaching four 8’ panel wing doors that expanded the trailer to 32’ in length when displayed. The exterior of the trailer and its expandable doors, were customized to mimic urban and rural environments using three dimensional graphics.

     The exterior environment around the trailer included real crosswalks, traffic lights, signage, and cut-outs to instruct children of the appropriate street behaviors and safety practices. The interior of the trailer modeled a Safe at Home Program, teaching children the proper safety instruction used at home. Turtle fabricated the interior to replicate the inside of a family home, with real life elements like a stove, bathtub, stairs, and cabinets. UMass used the interior of the trailer for instruction in: fire safety, burns, drowning, falls, storage of firearms, medications, and household toxins.

     While the trailer alone is impressive, it will be towed by a real mini-school bus that teaches further safety instruction in, passenger safety, respect for the bus driver, and pedestrian safety around the school bus. Interactive Stations were fabricated in the interior of the bus, and featured HP Touchsmart computers for safety exercises.

     Turtle also designed all of the printed materials for the Safety Street program, including various color pages, activity worksheets, learning checklists, certificates, and safety behavior brochures. Mobile Safety Street is scheduled to visit a number of Worcester County, MA public schools and national community events within the next year. The ultimate goal of this unique mobile marketing program is to reduce the number of child emergency room visits pertaining to common safety related issues.