Kieranbagsanationalaward
16-YEAR-OLD TARBERT COMPREHENSIVE STUDENT’S POTENTIALLY LIFE-SAVING IDEA COMES OUT ON TOP AT AWARDS
IT was an idea that he had always wanted to develop further, but it took a near-fatal accident involving some of his cycling companions last year for 16-year-old TY student Kieran Spaight to take that next step towards making his dream a reality.
For Tarbert Comprehensive student Kieran, the next step came this past week after he was announced winner of the ‘Go Green: Be Sustainable’ creative video competition at the Student Enterprise Programme awards which – due to COVID-19 – were held virtually last week.
Kieran’s project is entitled ‘Cycle Away Co2’, and with it he was able to impress the judges. With this success under his belt, he now hopes he will be able to take his project further.
Speaking to
Kieran was in a jubilant mood after the win, which he described as “fantastic”, and he explained just what ‘ Cycle Away Co2’ is about and how it has the very real potential, if implemented, to save hundreds of lives on our roads.
“I’m big into cycling. I do a lot of it, and when you’re a cyclist you’re always aware that there’s a big danger on the roads, especially from cars,” he said.
Kieran said last year that some of his friends were involved in a cycling accident, and this incident helped inspire his idea.
“Thankfully, none of them were killed, but a few did suffer some fairly bad injuries,” Kieran said.
“I was actually meant to be out cycling with them that night but I was caught doing some work,” he continued.
“People are very much put off cycling in rural areas because they think it’s too dangerous.
“With my idea, I want to take this risk out of cycling and encourage people to take it up both for fitness and community reasons.”
Arising from this near-fatal incident, Kieran decided to work on developing ‘Cycle Away Co2’, and when the Student Enterprise Programme was looking for entries, he knew that he had to enter his idea.
“Basically the project that I have developed is a transmitter-like device which would be inserted into the bar below the seat of the bike. The device would then be picked up by a receiver located within cars,” he continued.
“My plan is that the driver would then be alerted to a cyclist’s presence on the road by a beeping sound in their car and a display icon on their dashboard. It would alert the driver when a cyclist is 50- 80 metres ahead of them. I want this to be rolled out to all vehicles on the road as a legal requirement,” he said.
“My motto behind the project is ‘Forewarned is Forearmed’ which basically means that if drivers know that there are cyclists ahead of them on the road, they will be more alert, and this will help to prevent accidents involving cars and cyclists,” said Kieran.
The Student Enterprise Programme is an initiative run by the Network of Local Enterprise Offices of Ireland and Kieran wishes to thank Maeve Townsend from the Tralee Enterprise Office, as well as the business teachers at Tarbert Comprehensive for all the help they have given him on developing this project.