Kristyn Comino
27 August 2015: A group of University of Canberra students were one of the winning teams of the recent Univative Canberra Challenge for their innovative approach to increasing cycle crash reporting rates, which could help improve local cycling safety.
Competing against The Australian National University, the Univative challenge is designed to give university students the chance to work on real-world business problems, with the University of Canberra team taking out first place for the cycling project set by the ACT Government.
The competing teams were given four weeks to find a way to increase the rate of cycle crash reporting in the ACT, with the University of Canberra group opting to survey cyclists to find out if they were aware that they needed to report all cycling accidents to the ACT Government. They then used that information to develop a marketing plan to help raise awareness of the issue.
"Not being cyclists ourselves, we decided we needed to get real perspectives from cyclists to get a better understanding of the issue and help inform our proposal, so we produced an online survey that attracted responses from 140 Canberra residents," team leader Kirandeep (Kiran) Goraya said.
"When the results showed these cyclists weren't aware of their duty to report any minor or major cycling accidents to the ACT Government, we developed a marketing campaign the government could use to help make people more aware. The ideas we worked on included conceptualising an app and using social media and traditional media to get the messages out there to increase reporting," the Master of Information Technology and Systems student added.
Team member and Master of Professional Accounting student Karen Muga said: "with better data on cycling accidents the government could potentially use that information to better plan roads for the safety of ACT."
"It was fantastic to get the chance to work on a real-life project like this to help build our skills and employability," she added.
The other winning team members were Bachelor of Business Administration student Janet Johnson and Master of Urban and Regional Planning student Phillip MacDougall.
To celebrate their win, the group met with ACT Minister for Sport and RecreationShane Rattenbury MLA at a formal morning tea on 7 August, where he congratulated the students on their idea, adding that he was looking forward to seeing how they might be able to progress these ideas.
Other projects for this year's challenge were set by the Capital Metro Agency and ACT Health.
