WALK THIS WAY Was your walk safe By

WALK THIS WAY! Was your walk safe? By Mrs. Heller’s 4 th graders: Samantha, Anushka, Maya, Srinidhi, Harshini, John, Nikhil, Thomas, Ethan, Matthew, Nathan, Brooke, Emily, Charlotte, Bisola, Nicholas and Siddanth

Introduction The 4 th grade students at Lawrence Intermediate School participated in Safe Kids, Walk This Way on October 7 & 8, 2014. The students enjoyed an assembly on pedestrian safety before taking a walk around the school. Ms. Jane Millner (of St. Lawrence Rehabilitation Center, the lead organization of Mercer County Safe Kids), Mr. Jerry Foster, and Ms. Aly Dyson (of Transportation Management Associates) worked with LIS to bring Fed. Ex trucks and Boomer, the Trenton Thunder mascot, to the event. After taking the walk, all 300 students surveyed the walkability of the area around LIS, while learning about staying safe while walking and riding bikes.

• This is the survey that 300 students responded to after their walk. • It took a long time to tally all the information and put it on a Google spreadsheet so we could make our graphs.

Pleasant Walk? We asked students, “Was your walk pleasant? ” Some students said the walk was pleasant, while others disagreed. Our data shows that some students thought their walk was enjoyable, and others thought there were problems with their walk. We got 114 votes for yes, it was pleasant, and 75 votes for no, it was not pleasant. Which is 60. 3% of students thought the walk was pleasant, while 39. 7% of students thought their walk was unpleasant. By: Brooke and Emily

Was Your Walk Pleasant? Emily Some of the problems the 4 th graders encountered while walking on Eggerts Crossing Road are recorded on the bar graph on the next slide.

Some of the Problems Brooke

Sidewalk Problems We asked the students to explain the problems that they experienced in their walk. Next, when we had collected all the data, we turned the information into a colorful graph to show you the problems. By: John G. and Nikhil. K

Sidewalk Problems John and Nikhil

Was it easy to cross streets? Siddanth and Nicholas

Were sidewalks safe? We made a bar graph and a pie graph to show the issues that the students observed. These problems took away from the safeness of the sidewalks. Some examples of the problems were blocked sidewalks and sidewalks that started and stopped. There was also other problems that were not listed, like narrow sidewalks, and plants growing on the sidewalks. These were problems that went into the “something else” category. The pie graph showed that many people thought the sidewalks were safe, but on the other hand there were a lot of people who thought it wasn’t. It was half and half, which means the safety of the sidewalks might need to be improved. By: Maya, Harshini, and Srinidhi.

Maya, Srinidhi and Harshini

Overall, did students think the walk was safe? Our circle graph represents how safe the L. I. S. students thought their walk was. Here is what we discovered: ● 165 students wrote it was really safe or mostly safe. ● Only 26 students thought the walk was really unsafe or partly unsafe. So, the majority of the students thought the walk was safe. By: Charlotte Siobhan Luckey and Bisola Oluyomi

Were drivers behaving well? In the survey, the 4 th graders were asked whether drivers that the students saw on their walk were behaving well or not. If a student responded “no, drivers were not behaving well”, there was a variety of choices to pick from that were all problems. For example, you could choose that the drivers were driving too fast, they were speeding up to make it through red lights, or both. Our circle graph only represents the choices for drivers who were not behaving well. By Thomas and Ethan

Were drivers behaving well, according to the students? number of students By Thomas and Ethan

Did drivers behave well? By Thomas and Ethan

Was it easy to follow safety rules for pedestrians? Matthew and Nathan

Did most kids stop, look right and left? Matthew and Nathan

Could a pedestrian walk on sidewalks/shoulders? Matthew and Nathan

Did pedestrians cross with the light? Matthew and Nathan

Conclusion Overall, the walk was great! Most of the students said their walk was pleasant. None of the responses we received had more 4 th graders say it was bad than good! The biggest problem area is the sidewalks, since 53. 2% voted they are safe, but 46. 8% voted they aren’t safe. I hope we will work together to make Lawrence Township an even safer place to take your strolls. Thank you for having us. We hope you’ve considered this data we’ve brought to you and we hope you have had a great time listening to our reports! Samantha