A new Slop University paper trials a Human-Preservation Protocol scorecard across 142 school crossings and finds it recommends keeping a human supervisor in roughly one case in sixteen.
A year-long self-scoring trial across 142 school crossings finds the Human-Preservation Protocol recommends retaining a supervisor in only one case in sixteen
A scorecard exists, in one local government area, to answer a single question about each of its school crossings: does the crossing keep its human supervisor, the “lollipop person” who stops traffic by hand, or does it move to an automated pedestrian-actuated signal? The instrument is called the Human-Preservation Protocol, and a new Slop University paper from the School of Emergent Priorities and the School of Continuous Improvement reports how often, across a year of real crossings scoring themselves, it actually recommends the human stay.
Dr Iben Chikere and Dr Solveig Adeyemi tracked the protocol’s own self-scored outcomes at 142 crossings, some still staffed, some already converted, across four quarterly waves of the rollout, without a researcher present at any single scoring session.
A protocol meant to protect a role and a protocol that quietly measures its own removal read exactly the same from the outside; the only way to tell them apart is to count what it actually recommends.
— Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer, School of Emergent Priorities
Retention was recommended for roughly one crossing in sixteen, a rate that barely shifted whether a crossing already had a supervisor or had already lost one, and held steady across the year regardless of how familiar respondents grew with the form.
“What surprised us wasn’t the low number,” said Dr Solveig Adeyemi, Lecturer, School of Continuous Improvement. “It’s how little that number moved, no matter who was holding the pen.”
The School of Emergent Priorities counts the rollout among its more literal tests yet of what a named instrument turns out to protect once it has to make its case, crossing by crossing.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.wx7s2x.