17-year-old Virginia student builds safer walking app; 14 schools pilot it

SafeWalkr launches across 14 FCPS schools, helping families find safer walking routes on National Walk and Roll to School Day. For most students, getting home from school is a routine journey. For Daniil Prokofev, an eight-mile run home turned into something far more consequential. A route generated by Google Maps sent the 17-year-old along a stretch of Braddock Road without sidewalks, forcing him close to traffic and through shrubbery as daylight faded. What should have been a straightforward trip quickly became a lesson in how navigation apps can overlook one crucial factor: whether a route is actually safe for the person using it. That experience eventually led Prokofev and two classmates at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, to create SafeWalkr, a walking navigation platform designed with student safety in mind. The project, which began as a 24-hour coding challenge, is now being piloted across 14 Fairfax County Public Schools, states an online report by FCPS News.When the fastest route isn't the safestProkofev, now a senior, had assumed that a standard pedestrian route would account for basic safety. Instead, his experience highlig...