Schools urged to include road safety in curriculum

Experts have urged various international schools in the Kingdom to introduce road safety education in their curriculum.
According to a recent study, around 57 percent of road accident fatalities involve teachers and students. The study showed that teachers, both male and female, accounted for 35 percent of these fatalities and students 22 percent.
“Schools should have introduced road safety education in their curriculum by now,” said Maha Bawazeer, education consultant and member of the private and international schools committee at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI).
“Children need to be aware of road safety rules and make them respect the regulations,” said Bawazeer. “They must basically be given safety education in all fields — safety at home, on the road, at school. We Arabs especially don’t respect traffic rules. Not many of us are aware at which point to cross the road, when to stop our vehicles and let pedestrians cross. We just follow what we like instead of following rules,” Bawazeer said.
She said that in Europe and America, road safety is taught as a subject in schools. “It is also linked to driving license. One is not allowed to obtain a license if one has not passed certain exams.”
“I think road safety education must start from elementary school,” Bawazeer said, adding: “It is important to start educating children from an early age in simple terms and gradually increase the information and going deep into the topic as they grow older.”
The major challenge many schools in the Kingdom face is the lack of qualified trainers and road safety experts, and the absence of support material for teachers to handle. “Maybe it is the lack of trainers or maybe because, according to the Saudi society, driving is only for men and boys,” explained Bawazeer. “Although it is not right, we need to live by this culture.
But nowadays, women in this country go out and drive and are fully aware of what level of education they must follow.”
“It is important to introduce school road safety education to provide young people with appropriate road safety skills and practices at all levels of their schooling,” said Randa Aziz, a Riyadh-based education expert. “Today, road crashes are a leading cause of death and injury to children aged between two and 14 years. Children need help to keep safe on or near the road. At ages 5-7 they do not have the maturity or experience to judge such things as the speed at which a car is traveling.”
Aziz said that apart from the school, it is important to involve parents and the community. “Students will benefit when their road safety education is reinforced at home and when their parents provide positive role models.”
Early this week, Sultan Al-Zahrani, secretary-general for EP Traffic Safety Council and director of Traffic Safety Signature Program (TSSP) at Saudi Aramco, signed an agreement with the minister of education for the introduction of a special weekly seminar on the awareness of traffic safety for schools, starting from Grade three at a cost of SR35 million.
Al-Zahrani said that the main objective of the initiative is to promote a culture of commitment to traffic instructions and to minimize the number to pedestrian accidents that take thousands of lives annually.
He said that teachers can register in the program by visiting the committee’s website. So far, about 1,000 teachers, both male and female, have registered for the program.
Al-Zahrani said female students will also be given road safety lessons, so they can contribute positively by advising their drivers to drive safely.
“We imparted training to around 85,000 students recently. We are working on training more students in the Eastern Province, to reach our target of 850,000,” he said.