Boom Gates Protecting our most vulnerable pedestrians

Road accidents are one of the highest causes of child deaths and injuries in Australia. The most prevalent area for vehicle accidents, after the home, is at school.  The sad part of this is most of these accidents are preventable.

Between 2001-10:

• 204 pedestrians under the age of 14 were killed in locations outside the home
• 4,440 were seriously injured vehicle accidents, including instances of low-speed run-over
• 14% of deaths occurred in car parks and roads in places such as schools, universities, hospitals, factory premises and so on – where we would expect vehicles to be travelling at low speeds and performing low-speed manoeuvres.
  Department of Infrastructure and Transport report on Child Pedestrian Safety: ’driveway deaths’ and ‘low-speed vehicle run-overs’, Australia, 2001–10

Safety within our schools has highest priority

Traffic and parking problems are significant issues for schools and are putting children at risk of being injured or worse, particularly during drop off and pick up times.  Children by nature are impulsive, easily distracted and have little sense of danger.  Many incidents of school car park pedestrian accidents across Australia has moved schools to look for ways to better manage the safety and well-being of pupils.

Conscious of their obligations schools place a high priority on implementing appropriate measures to prevent physical injury to pupils when the children are under their control.

Mooloolaba State School – acts to protect its most valuable assets   

As part of its concerns for the welfare of its pupils and given the layout of its grounds Mooloolaba State School sought to make access to its grounds safer.

A key issue was that parents were ignoring the designated drop off area and driving through the main gates to the teachers car park. The teacher’s car park is generally a restricted zone and despite being designated “out of bounds” for students and unauthorised vehicles there was nothing to prevent access to this area.

What was needed was the ability to strictly control the access into the teacher’s car parking area during morning drop-off and afternoon pick-ups.

When a road is not a road – you need a boom gate

Although the road entry to the teacher’s car park was already gated – the gate needed to be left open during the day to allow convenient vehicle access.

The best solution for this situation was to install a boom gate with a timer that closes the boom gate during drop off times and re-opens after school has started.  A keypad allows teachers, administration staff and authorised visitors access to the area during the period the boom gate is down. The system requires no supervision and is fully automatic.

There was no available mains power supply at the location which would normally necessitate digging up the driving way to lay power cables.  However choosing to install Rotech’s Sector 12vdc automatic boom gate was the ideal product to address Mooloolaba State Schools requirements.

The Sector automatic boom gate is low voltage, high speed, battery driven, safety sensing and designed for high-volume traffic control environments.  Adding the solar powered option meant there was no need to run high voltage cables to the gate which was a significant saving to the cost of installation.

We understand parents give considerable weight to safety and security when selecting a school for their child to attend and were pleased to have enabled Mooloolaba State School with its commitment to protecting its pupils.  

If you have a particular access control situation you need a cost effective, creative solution for give Alan Roberts a call on (07) 3205 1123 or email info@rotech.com.au.