Qatar students invent device to avoid cases of children stuck in school bus

Doha, The Gulf Observer: While the communities in Qatar mourned the death of a four-year-old forgotten in a school bus last year, two school students in the country were thinking of how to avoid such loss in the future.

Rana and Maha of Al Andalus Primary Girls School worked together to invent a device that will count the students entering and exiting the school bus, and also show the number of people inside the bus at any point of time.

In an interview with Qatar TV, Maha said that the idea came to their minds when they heard reports of the KG-1 student dying from suffocation inside the school bus. “We discussed and thought of inventing a device placed at the bus door to avoid anyone being forgotten inside the bus. We invented this device that has two sensors which will record whenever a child enters and exits the bus. The device is equipped with a screen which will show the number of people inside the bus,” she said, while showing the prototype on the channel.

The kids then approached Qatar University with their prototype, states Rana, adding that “the engineers at the University helped us improve the programming of the device further.”

Innovations such as these can result in avoiding of incidence of children being forgotten on buses that are reported frequently from different parts of the world.