Inspiration
Living in India, we all know the absolute nightmare of getting stuck in traffic. Especially in places like Bangalore, watching an ambulance desperately blaring its siren at massive bottlenecks like Silk Board, Hebbal, or Marathahalli during peak rush hour is just heartbreaking. People honestly want to give way, but the roads are so tightly packed that they physically have nowhere to go. I realized the main flaw is that our system is completely reactive—by the time the traffic police actually hear the siren, it’s already game over. As a 12th-grade student just stepping into coding, I wanted to build something that gives these drivers a fighting chance by making the whole setup proactive.
What it does
GreenCorridor is a smart web app that connects ambulance drivers directly with traffic wardens and the police. When an ambulance starts its run, the driver just inputs their destination. The app uses geofencing logic to track the route. Minutes before the ambulance even hits a major bottleneck, the app automatically sends a high-priority alert to the traffic cops stationed ahead at that exact junction. This gives them a crucial 5-minute head start to aggressively clear a dedicated lane, creating a smooth "Green Corridor" before the ambulance gets trapped in the gridlock.
How we built it
Since I am a total beginner at programming, I focused on building a clean, working MVP simulation. I coded the whole backend and frontend using Python and a super simple web framework called Streamlit. I looked up and hardcoded the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of major city choke points to make the geofencing feel 100% real. The app has a dual setup: a left sidebar where the driver hits "Start Emergency Journey," and a main live dashboard for the traffic police that automatically updates maps and flashes big red warnings using timed loops.
Challenges we ran into
Being a complete beginner meant facing a massive learning curve in just 24 hours. At first, I got totally overwhelmed trying to figure out heavy, complicated mapping APIs. My biggest hurdle was figuring out state management—basically, making an action on the driver's side instantly trigger a blinking alarm on the police officer's screen without crashing the whole browser. I spent hours debugging simple syntax errors, but I eventually figured out how to write clean logic loops and keep the app lightweight enough to host online.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I’m incredibly proud that I took a massive real-world problem and actually turned it into a working software prototype in just one weekend! Getting the app deployed live on the cloud so that anyone can open the link on their phone and test the simulation was an amazing feeling. Proving that you can build a life-saving concept using less than 100 lines of simple Python code feels like a huge win for my first ever hackathon.
What we learned
This hackathon completely changed how I look at computer science. I learned that you don't need to be a coding genius with ten years of experience to build something impactful; you just need to break a big problem down into small, logical steps. I learned the basics of Python scripting, how to build UI elements easily, how to push code to GitHub, and how important a clean layout is when pitching an idea to judges.
What's next for GreenCorridor: Police create for emergency vehicles
Next up, I want to take this from a simulation to a real-world tool. I plan to integrate live GPS tracking using real mapping APIs so it calculates traffic dynamically instead of using timers. Most importantly, I want to see how this software could connect directly with physical smart traffic lights, allowing the police to automatically turn signals green right from their phones and seamlessly create green corridors on demand.
Built With
- 24
- 3.1
- 5
- 5.9
- alert
- codegen
- drizzle
- drizzle-zod
- engine
- express.js
- haversine
- javascript
- leaflet.js
- node.js
- openapi
- orm
- orval
- pnpm
- postgresql
- query
- react
- route
- tanstack
- typescript
- v4
- vite
- workspaces
- wouter
- zod
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