European Road Safety Charter. Safe route to and from school

"Children are the only form of immortality we can be sure of" - Peter Ustinow

The everyday route to and from school is not always and not everywhere well prepared, fitted with equipment and designed to trigger appropriate behaviour of traffic participants and to develop good habits in accordance with safety rules and facilities for both pedestrians and bikers. A route to school in a small town should be as safe and child-friendly as that in a large city.

Route to school - Silno, Gdynia, Gdansk

Safety of life and health of children as traffic participants lies within the responsibility of parents, school headmasters, teachers, relevant services, as well as local and central authorities. The home and school area is usually safe for children, whereas the route to and from school is often a danger zone, where children are most often left alone to deal with this danger. A child of 6 or 7 with no experience, skills and good habits and knowledge is not yet prepared to properly assess the situation on the road and thus to act properly according to the traffic situation.

Road surroundings
It is required that the children have good examples. Lack of educational cohesion among parents and school, drivers and other road users leads to the child choosing own solutions.

Bad examples set by adults

However, the education of children and youth alone, without appropriate road transport solutions will not improve the level of safety as it is merely an element of the road safety system. It is necessary to adjust engineering solutions to child's capabilities. The road surroundings and road solutions should educate also through forcing children's safe behaviour in road traffic.

Organizing a safe route to school
The children must be trained in traffic safety regulations. Nevertheless, a safe system of pedestrian (and bicycle) routes should be designed to force appropriate behaviours. The municipalities are responsible for proper road system and it is their legal duty to assure the children get safely to school and return. However, the safety in the areas adjacent to schools depends also on social understanding of this problem. Therefore, the cooperation among all institutions responsible for road safety, teachers and parents and also children themselves is important.This process is composed of:

—> Identifying dangerous places and problems,
—> Preparing school travel plans,
—> Providing both parents and children with information and maps including the route to school,
—> Implementing preventive measures and improvements.

It is necessary to create an information map concerning accidents with pedestrians and cyclists for the period of 3-5 years. The accident analyses must be supplemented by questionnaires carried out among students and parents. A map of the area should be attached to the questionnaire, which will allow the parents and children to mark the route to school as well as obstacles and dangerous places on it.

On the basis of such analysis a map of children's route to school should be created.The plan should:

—> Provide children with maximum protection at minimal cost
—> Take advantage of the existing traffic organization facilities
—> Show the school particular streets as well as safety facilities at road-crossing places.

School headmasters should aim at making the provisions on safety statutory regulations and at including road safety education in the curriculum. Chief Education Officers, when approving school statutes and curricula should pay special attention to regulations concerning the safety of children. They should promote schools creating their own safe route to/from school programmes on the regional level.

Local self-government representing the community should take care of safety and invest in safe road solutions. The Convention on the Right of the Child is one of the legal acts obliging local authorities to taking such steps.

Children protection in traffic requires:
► vigilant, responsible and technically good drivers
► thoughtful and prudent guardians - tutors - teachers
► education of parents as to the necessary child protection resources
► change in the penal code regulations as to the responsibility for negligence in performing statutory duties on the part of institutions responsible for these issues.

Parents, guardians, tutors, teachers and all those who help a child participate in the road traffic should be included in all actions to improve children's safety on their way to and from school.