School Zone Safety Audit Logger

Field guide: School Zone Safety Audit Logger

Child pedestrians are unpredictable, short, and certain the car sees them — school-zone engineering exists to compensate, and audits exist because its components quietly fail: beacons drift off schedule (or flash all weekend until drivers stop believing them), crosswalk paint wears exactly where buses brake, and the sight triangle gets colonized by parked SUVs at the precise height of a third-grader. This logger structures the before-school-year audit plus the in-session checks, with one panel reserved for what no drive-by sees: actual arrival/dismissal behavior.

Observed-behavior findings carry the program: speeding 'common', bus-passing reports, the desire-line crossing forty meters from the marked one. These aren't infrastructure defects — they're evidence the infrastructure doesn't match human movement, and they justify the RRFBs, median refuges, circulation redesigns and enforcement that signs alone can't deliver. GPS-pinned findings per school build the district-wide priority list Safe Routes to School funding asks for.

Field tips

• Audit beacons at the exact scheduled minute — 'works when tested midday' misses the clock-drift failures that matter at 7:42 a.m.
• Stand at child eye-height (≈1.1 m) at each crossing: the parked-car screen problem is invisible from adult height.
• Film one dismissal a semester (where policy allows) — fifteen minutes of footage reorders the findings list every time.

Records are stored only in this browser (localStorage) — export regularly. This tool aids field documentation; it does not replace your agency's official inspection procedures or engineering judgment.