JACKSON TWP — Students from the Seneca Valley School District are the winners of PennDOT District 10's second Innovations Challenge.

Team members Caroline Cohen and Kevin Karatassos were mentored by Dean Walker, the state Department of Transportation said Wednesday, announcing the winning team.

Since last fall, students have been working to solve this year's challenge, which asked them to look at innovative methods, aside from laws and educational campaigns, to develop in the next five to 10 years to get drivers to slow down in work zones.

“Every day, construction workers on Pennsylvania roads face a dangerous threat in work zones,” said PennDOT Secretary Leslie Richards. “Despite increased enforcement efforts, work zone signage and smart phone alerts, drivers continue to commit traffic violations in work zones, which can lead to crashes or, tragically, someone being killed. We challenged our next generation of leaders to become an active part of the solution by developing innovative ways to tackle this transportation issue.”

The winning regional team's innovation was the utilization of reusable non-Newtonian, fluid-filled “smart” speed bumps that would react like a solid when struck by vehicles traveling more than 55 mph. Non-Newtonian fluids do not follow Isaac Newton's law of viscosity, in that the fluids can change when under force to be either more liquid or more solid.

“One type of the 'smart' speed bumps are filled with different non-Newtonian fluids that allow someone going under the speed limit to pass over them unnoticed, but anyone surpassing the speed limit would be reminded by the bumps that they are driving too fast,” Walker explained.

“They wanted to put the speed bumps in sets of three, spaced 40 feet apart, with the sets spaced every half-mile. The idea is to frequently remind speeding drivers that they are speeding in a construction zone, similar to the way rumble strips will notify a driver that they are leaving the road. The reminder, along with the nuisance of the speed bumps, would ideally get drivers to reduce their speed, so that they would be unaffected by the bumps.”

Now in its second year, the PennDOT Innovations Challenge invites ninth through 12th grade students to use their problem-solving skills to solve real-world transportation challenges.

The Innovations Challenge aims to not only help students explore actual transportation challenges that PennDOT is facing, but also open their minds to the possibility of working for PennDOT after graduation.

Regional winners will move on to compete on April 10 in Harrisburg for the state championship.

The statewide winning team will be awarded $1,500 from the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) to be divided among team members.