Safety

Today more and more people are traveling due to the need to get from place to place. The problem with this is that there are many preventable accidents that occur every day in various forms of transportation. Most people lack the knowledge that would allow them to stop these accidents from occurring. Even though people may know how to prevent an accident in one situation they may not be knowledgeable in preventing all accidents.

There is a simple solution to this problem, knowledge. We want to provide people with the knowledge they need to prevent accidents from occurring and teach them how to handle problems when they arise. In order to do this we will have a seminar with a guest speaker, Peter Greenberg, the travel editor for NBC's the Today Show, who will discuss traveling safety with the audience. He is also the chief correspondent for the Discovery Network's Travel Channel and editor-at-large for National Geographic Traveler magazine (Bransdorf).

To help people develop awareness and become more safety conscious Mr. Greenberg will show them how to construct precautionary kits to take with them in their travels. Not every one travels in all forms of transportation, therefore we will be providing information regarding a vast amount of traveling forms in addition to our keynote speaker. At one point in the seminar, the audience members will be allowed to choose from a selection of stations that will focus on one specific form of travel. Here they will be provided with information from flight attendants, boat captains, former police officers and the boy scouts.

The funding for our seminar will come from the $25,000 grant we hope to receive from Rider University alumni.

Our group, consisting of Paul Betkowski, Ashley Benham, Rich Farra, Kalvin Thompson and Kerry Hawkins will be setting up and conducting the seminar. We will book the speakers and plan the activities that will take place during the seminar. All of us bring something different to the table that will help in setting up this seminar.

Need Statement:

After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the United Stated has become more safety conscious, especially in the tri-state area. In a survey our group conducted we found that 97% of the people believed that it was important to take precautions while traveling. One problem with this is that many people don't know how to take the proper precautions when they travel. In the same survey, 65% of the people claimed that they would not know how to survive in a drastic and/or unexpected situation. Many injuries and deaths involving cars, planes, trains, boats and other forms of public transportation could be easily avoided if precautions were taken in advance.

Many Americans believe that precautions should be taken while traveling, but statistics show that they fail to do so. In our survey we found that 57% of the people said that their cars have broken down before. Of those people, 72% feel that the problem causing the breakdown could have been prevented. According to The Auto Channel, AAA responded to nearly 30 million emergency calls in 1998 (www.theautochannel.com). As you can see there are numerous cases were cars, the most widely used form of transportation in the United States, breakdown. The majority of people use vehicular transportation everyday yet, they lack the knowledge to prevent a breakdown or accident from occurring.

Another common form of transportation that people commonly use is airplanes. In an interview we conducted with Jerilyn Benham, a customer service representative with Continental Airlines at Newark-Liberty International Airport, we found that airplane travel has reached an all time high (Personal Interview). Unfortunately, a fraction of these flights result in preventable accidents or injuries. In 1996, there were 1,681 accidents relating to airplane travel (Dasgupta). In our survey we asked people how often they fly, and found that 60% of them fly always or sometimes. Out of the people who responded never to this question, 66% of them were not aware of the safety on airplanes.

A third form of transportation frequently used is boats. People travel on boats to get to work, for recreational use or for vacation purposes. In a second interview we conducted with Jill Valenti, who travels by ferry to get to work everyday, she said that ever since the Staten Island Ferry crash passengers have become more aware of the risks involved in traveling on the water (Personal Interview). According to the U.S. Cost Guard Recreational Boating Accident Report Database (BARD), there were 8,044 boating accidents in 1997 (www.boatsafe.com). Based on this and all the other statistics we have provided, you can see the need for people to be educated on safety while traveling.

Project Description

The goal of our seminar is to educate people on safety while traveling and also teach them what to do in emergency situations they may find themselves in. We want our audience to leave our seminar with the knowledge they need to be safe in all different types of traveling situations. Our seminar will feature our key note speaker, Peter Greenberg. Mr. Greenberg is chief correspondent for the Discovery Network's Travel Channel and author of multiple books regarding travel safety. Mr. Greenberg will thoroughly discuss how to take precautions while traveling for business. Being a travel guru, he will inform the audience on how to construct a traveling safety kit of their own.

Not only will we feature a key note speaker, but we will offer different stations that are geared towards specific means of travel and the precautions involved in those specific travel forms.

The first station will focus on automobile safety. In this station, Vicky Weaver, head of Rider University Security and a former police officer, will help educate the guests on driving safety. She will offer different scenarios of expected and unexpected problems with cars that may arise in our everyday lives.

In the second station we will have a few currently employed flight attendants from Continental Airlines who will be discussing airplane safety. They are all highly trained to handle different types of emergency situations while traveling. The audience members will learn how to prepare for air travel and how to handle themselves in a drastic situation. This will hopefully persuade more people to fly and increase safety confidence during airplane travel, thus reducing the anxiety of the passengers.

The third station will feature Captain Andrew Hessler, a sailing captain who is well versed in the safety of boating. At this station, audience members will be taught about the various rules