General Safety wins Rep. Don Davis’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in North Carolina’s First District

When asked what inspired the creation of General Safety, the student said, “I am slumped low on a school bus on my way home. It’s a warm, sunny spring day, one of those days where the air around you practically sings you to sleep.
I am staring out of the grimy window. Neat houses are whiz by as the bus trundles along faithfully.  The bus stops. A younger-looking boy, probably a sixth grader, gangly and tugging along his rolling backpack disembarks, snapping shut his ward’s telescoping handle and letting it drag him down the steps of the bus. His house is to the left, the same side I’m sitting on, so I get a good view of his near-death experience. An enormous car is bearing down on the Rolling Backpack Kid, one of those big, black, gas-guzzling Escalades. He freezes, an innocent doe helpless before the average American’s second most fearsome weapon. The man driving the big, black, gas-guzzling Escalade keeps driving. RBK snaps out of his trance. He scans his surroundings lazily, as if freshly awoken. Suddenly, he dives back towards the bus, out of the big, black, gas-guzzling Escalade’s way. His namesake isn’t so lucky. His backpack rips in half. The handle snaps with a sickening crunch; the bag proper is eviscerated. Torn paper goes everywhere. The more finely shredded fragments linger in the soft wind, wafting about. They have that off-color look cheap paperbacks do, looking for all the world like cremated remains.
I was in shock. That was real! He almost just died!  I discovered that he wasn’t alone. Every day, some 3,000 drivers ignore the stop arm on a school bus in North Carolina. Two have been put in critical condition this year. That means that every day, at least 3,000 children, some as young as three,  are subjected to mortal peril on their way to and from school.  

I hope you find this troubling. I certainly did. 

That’s why I created General Safety. I wanted to hold these people accountable and make them pay. Hopefully, with my cameras installed, people will think twice before running a stop arm and all my fellow bus riders can rest a little easier.”