Every Virginian over 30 you could hope to meet will know someone who has collided with a deer in their car: the state is in the top ten nationwide for deer-related crashes.
These two high school seniors have just received a large grant to pursue their research into a device that detects cars and deer via artificially intelligent cameras, and helps both avoid collisions.
Shaurya Jain and Anmol Karan from Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County received $15,000 after presenting their prototype.
The money came from the Animal Welfare Institute as a part of the Christine Stevens Wildlife Award, and it left the two young men feeling “honored.”
“Not everyone would trust a bunch of high schoolers with this kind of money,” Jain told WTOP.
Positioned on the side of the road, if the device detects both cars and deer in the vicinity, it emits high-frequency pulses and animal sounds to deter the deer from attempting to cross at that moment. If positioned in places with high deer traffic, the boys hope it will stop them from impacting traffic, especially at night when visibility is low and deer are most active.
In 2022, 6,100 traffic collisions, or 15% of the total number in the state, involved deer, an incident ratio that left 500 people injured.
Mr. Jain says he was inspired by his religion: Jainism—which holds all animals to be sacred and carriers of souls, while Karan was moved to action by the news that his uncle had collided with a deer in his car at night in Loudon County and was badly injured.
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“Seeing him caused me to just feel that there probably is some type of method that we can keep on these roads in order to prevent such accidents from happening,” said Karan.
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The Virginia Transportation Research Council applauded the students’ idea and wrote letters of encouragement to them. They are still collecting data on deer injuries and hope to start roadside testing soon.
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