Abstract:

Hands-on experience is a non dispensable tool that educates students and prepare them for their professional endeavor. This paper summarizes the students learning experience as part of their capstone design project. Senior students at the department of engineering investigated the crash and traffic accidents history, locations, occurrences, probable causes at various locations, and designed safety solutions and systems to counter such problems within the city of Martin in the state of Tennessee. Future engineers deserve the chance to have such real life experience. The output and results of the students’ work will be implemented and promised to be adopted by the city of Martin as agreed by the decision maker body.

This educational experience: analysis, design, public meetings, purchase and bidding, challenges, learned experience and the construction of the adopted safety systems along with the students’ feedback is shared with the teacher/student community to be used as a tool and a case study for similar future work.

Traffic and accidents studies are basic practice in traffic Engineering that has certain protocol and well documented procedure in manuals and reference handbooks. It requires extensive data collection that is based on traffic theories, probabilities and statistical analysis. Traffic monitoring and data collection is based on the use of equipment such as radar guns, pneumatic tubes, Digital traffic intersection counters, and post analysis modeling software. The students project is divided into two phases. Phase one focuses on collecting traffic data, perform traffic studies, creating an accident GIS (Geographic Information System) map along with details and causes of such accidents. Phase two aims at designing solutions/systems based on the results of the traffic and accidents analysis.

A survey is used at the end of the project to get the feedback from the students in regard to their learning experience.

Promoting students’ engagement through hands on experience improved learning and helped students transfer theory into real application. It might get frustrating for both students and teachers at some times but the benefits and advantages are countless especially in the engineering world.

Keywords:

Hand on, traffic engineering, capstone design, projects, safety.