Teaching road safety to school children
Ever so often, society gets shocked by cases of young school children being abducted by malicious parties. Some were taken for ransom, others abused in various forms, and a good few end up dead. It goes to show how dangerous society has become, and we’re no longer growing up in the same environment as our parents where children get go out and play on their own.
Keeping children contained in the confines of home removes them out of harms way, but it’s hardly a viable solution. And what happens when they do need to go out on their own? It is important that children are taught, from a young age, the skills and common sense needed to ensure they remain street smart and able to keep themselves out of danger.
One of the programmes under UMW Toyota Motor’s vast umbrella of Corporate Social Responsibility umbrella focuses heavily on this aspect of road safety. In 2008, the company introduced a national road safety club for children – dubbed the Traffic Heroes Club, with a huge mascot to boot. Just for your information, the mascot is called (you guessed it) the Traffic Hero – a superhero dedicated to battle traffic accidents!
Grown-ups may chuckle at that, but the fact is that since June 2008, the Traffic Heroes Club has amassed over 6,300 members ranging from 7 to 12 years of age. Open to primary school students nationwide, it operates via an online interactive website, which hosts various road safety themed online games to engage members.
At the end of each year, winners of contests, and 30 of the most active members receive invitations to a specially organized Road Safety Camp, which serves as a weekend retreat interlaced with activities centering on road safety education.
This year, the Road Safety Camp is entitled ‘Safe Routes to School Programme’, where the children, each accompanied by a parent, were taught to identify the safest routes to take to their respective schools based on criteria such as traffic congestion, safety features, environment, and potential hazards.
“We believe these efforts will enable us to make a difference and reduce accident rates involving school children. This is also the reason why UMW Toyota Motor is supporting the programme. We are working with GRSP (Global Road Safety Partnership) to map out our 2010 plan but for the Road Safety Camp, we wanted to venture into it, so we could have a first hand experience with this programme,” said Mr K. Mohanan, Head of External Affairs Department, Strategic Marketing Group, UMW Toyota Motor.
During the conclusion of the Road Safety Camp, held at the Grand Blue Wave hotel in Shah Alam, prizes were presented to the top three winners of the Traffic League online contest. The winners, Lee Kien Shane, Joshua Tee, and Mohd Uqail Eddieham walked home with a Sony PSP, iPod Nano, and Nintendo DS respectively.
For this year, 2009, the Traffic Heroes Club has visited a total of 40 schools nationwide, spreading the message of road safety to the school-goers by means of various role-playing games and quizzes.
According to Datuk Suret Singh, Director General of the Road Safety Deparment, in a speech read by his assistant, En Sahipul Hijaiman, “Road safety is a national and global problem which requires a collective response to innovate, educate, lead and inspire road users to practice a first world road safety culture beginning with a mindset change leading to change in daily safety first practice and nurturing a safety first culture in our community.” (ed: Pretty long winded, but we couldn’t agree more!)
Commenting about the UMW Toyota Motor’s road safety plan for 2010, Mohanan said, “Our aim next year is to extend it to as many schools possible in this country so that more school children would be able to learn to plan their journey to schools.”
