As seen on TV: How does Child Car Safety App help parents keep their children safe during car rides

Meeting at the intersection of our three main domains of interest, the Child Car Safety app, developed by Linnify at Copil Iubit la Bord’s initiative, made it to the top IT National Television Segment on Friday, 23rd September 2022. (Beloved Child on Board) 

‘I Like IT’ on ProTV Romania is a segment on the national news program that presents the newest IT, science, and technology innovations in the domain. As the Product Manager of the application, me, Anca Aron, together with Ana Maita, one of the founders, were invited to make a live demo and presentation on why parents should and could use the free app. 

We also used this opportunity to reinforce the initiative’s mission of guiding the parents toward better safety-oriented behavior and have more information and knowledge about their children's safety needs and solutions. 

How does this app intertwine with three domains at the same time?

We are talking about:

Health | Wellbeing | Education

We are talking about the Health of the little ones and the Well-being of the entire family through the parents’ Education on how to ensure the safety of children during car rides. This couldn’t be more aligned with our vision of helping bold innovators build products that dare make an improvement in people's lives. 

What does this app do?

Created for parents of children from 0-13 years old, the app helps them through tailored advice on how to ensure their little passengers' safety during car rides.

Within the app, parents create their children's profiles by setting their ages, height, and weight. Based on these metrics, and an AI algorithm, the app recommends the suitable safest car seat types specifically for their little ones.

By using text recognition and an AI algorithm, the application helps the parents to easily verify their current car seat or the ones they are planning to buy by scanning the orange label on the back of the seat. They can check if the seat is a match for the child and most importantly if it is safe according to European safety regulations. For cases when the label is unreadable, the data can be manually introduced and the seat can be saved to the child profile. 

Saving the car seat to the child’s profile it’s important so that the application can assist the parent with updating the information, announcing to them when it’s time to change the seat, or providing relevant tips and tricks in this area of interest

Why did Child Car Safety App come to life in Romania?

Ranking first in the European Commission's 2020 study regarding the number of car ride deaths, Romania still has a lot to learn when it comes to car safety.

That’s 85 car deaths once every million Romanians. (Source)

But how do our fellow Romanians secure their children, given the terrifying reality that includes adults as well?

Less than 50% of children are secured with a safety restraint system during car rides and for children over 5 years of age, the numbers go even lower. 

Studies show that, in case of an accident, children can be up to 71% safer while transported in a car seat. It is evident that we must do something to increase the percentage of safe children and help the parents understand the magnitude of the risk they are subjecting their children to. 

Even if the app started in Romania, it rapidly gained international attention from parents looking for such solutions in their journey. 

‘Although we don’t speak any Romanian - we downloaded the app and have been testing it (Congratulations! It is the most intuitive!)’

(feedback received via Beloved Child on Board)

The English version of the app is currently in progress and it will soon be available worldwide.

Why did we accept the invitation to present on national television?

While our mission is to help bold innovators build successful and scalable products, we are also truly committed to the success of the product. 

Even though being on national television comes off as a great responsibility, we wanted to do our part to help raise awareness on the topic. Among a long list that came off as intense regarding going live on TV, what crossed my mind was the responsibility of doing justice to the product and to the team. 

Being there as a representative of an entire team that put their heart and soul into the product was something I’m genuinely grateful for and had hoped to put everyone’s work into the best light.

What was the involvement from our side in this product?

Linnify is a strategic partner in developing software that puts the needs of the market at the core of the product. 

The way we make sure we minimize our clients’ unnecessary investments is by conducting a tailored validation process for the new products that want to make it to the market. In this way, we make sure we stick to our mission of creating scalable and successful products that the market needs and uses. 

Because of this, the way we help our clients and their product adapt significantly to meet the results they desire is to always keep the audience in mind. 

Child Car Safety app, as a new concept that responded to an underlying safety need and right to life, was not a usual app. 

In our process of validation, we aimed to identify the main reasons why parents don’t use or have difficulties with these safety measures specially created for their children.

We narrowed the results into three big categories. Parents either:

1. Don’t understand the risk
2. They get their information from too diverse and not reliable sources
3. Are genuinely not sure if they’re installing the seats properly 

Thus, the app focused its initial scope on solving these pain points of parents. 

How? 

The app provides information based on certified tests and studies, correlating data input with AI and text recognition algorithms to offer confirmation, validation, top-notch advice, and instructions for safe and sound car rides. 

The free, must-have app is a tech product developed by Linnify and is part of the Beloved Child on Board initiative. 

Get it on Google Play Store  |   Get it on App Store 

The Beloved Child on Board is a multisectoral initiative dedicated to prioritizing the safety of children while traveling in cars and it is supported by the Global Road Safety Partnership, a program of the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies, through the Fondation Botnar and the Botnar Child Road Safety Project. 

The project is coordinated by Fundația Crucea Albă and carried out with help from Primăria Municipiului Cluj-Napoca, through the Strategy and Local Development Service, Project Management, and the Local Police of Cluj-Napoca city in partnership with the Cluj County Police Inspectorate and the Public Health department of the College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences - Babeș-Bolyai University.