Distracted driving is 100 times worse than official estimates. This unsafe driving is rampant around US schools, meaning it’s in everyone’s backyard. So it’s no surprise that there’s been a recent spike in school zone road fatalities.
It sounds grim, but the good news is you can do something about it.
Today, we’re proud to announce #FundMyStreets. It’s a new initiative awarding $50,000 to fund improve traffic safety around schools.
For this effort we’ve partnered with road safety and mobility pioneersLyft, Uber, Lime, Bird, Juno and HopSkipDrive, as well as the nonprofits StopDistractions.org, Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) and Together for Safer Roads. This coalition has the shared goals of improving road safety and reducing unsafe driving and crashes.
A coalition of safety titans
“As parents, caregivers and members of our school communities, our greatest responsibility is to keep kids safe,” said our CEO and co-founder (and new father!) Jonathan Matus. “Our mission is to use data to make roads safe, and our School Safety Snapshot is a tool built around Zendrive data that helps communities design programs to deter risky driving. #FundMyStreets is the next logical step.”
“Lyft supports #FundMyStreets because we’re committed to safe travel in all the communities we serve,” said Kate Sampson, vice president of Risk Solutions at Lyft, a member of Together for Safer Roads. “We’re excited to see the innovative and inspired ideas that people propose and the positive impact they have on everyone using the roads — walkers, bike and scooter riders, drivers and passengers.”
“Distracted driving is an epidemic that affects every community across the country, and it needs to stop,” said Jennifer Smith, CEO of StopDistractions.org. “#FundMyStreets is an important step in advocates, community leaders and businesses working together to prevent other families from being impacted like mine and countless others across our nation.”
Contest details
U.S. applicants are invited to submit their plan for what their community would do with $50,000 to improve road safety before 11:59 pm PT on Monday, November 26, 2018 via fundmystreets.com. Judges from our partner nonprofits will invite finalists to tweet a 30-second video of their plan, and will then select a winner taking into account both the quality of the plan and the number of retweets. The winner, announced on Sunday, December 16, 2018, will win both the $50,000 for their project as well as access to Zendrive’s road safety data to assess the effectiveness of their implementation.
Find your school’s street safety grade, then head to fundmystreets.com to apply and make it safer.
