Hackathon

The Goodyear hackathon saw a team of teenage coders join a group of school pupils aged 11-14, to compete in a unique challenge. Their goal: to develop an idea for a game or app that appeals to young pre-drivers and improves their road sense.

The hackathon formed part of the Goodyear Driving Academy programme, which serves to increase road safety knowledge at an earlier age and educate pre-drivers about the importance of road safety with the view to creating better informed drivers of the future. 

The idea behind the London-based day which was in association with Wired Magazine and Rewired State,  was to give young people the chance to think of new, innovative and engaging ways of attracting their peers to pre-driver education. And to help develop a better approach to young driver learning for the future – using their coding and programming expertise.

The winning idea, developed by Benedict Allen and Lawrence Berry, was Gold Dash. Based on Google Maps, the game teaches users the Highway Code by breaking the Code down into manageable skills, and introducing new skills as players advance. Players need to understand each one and use them in combination, to go out in to the world – as represented by Google Maps – and collect gold. 

The game can be played on a smartphone whilst navigating. It is designed to encourage users to play for regular bursts of up to 15 minutes several times a day and return to check their gold and combine new skills. 

We were so impressed with the concept that we will now look into ways to develop the app for release in 2016. 

If you’d like more information about how to help your children learn about driving and road safety, visit our Parents Page to find out more.

Watch the Goodyear Hackday video here