Adults are usually sure that children know traffic rules well. In our opinion the problem is not how well they know them but how often they follow them.
We’ve decided to find out common mistakes that children make crossing streets.
Our video shows their common mistakes, safety behaviour in different situations and reminds that the road is a place of increased danger.
The ideas
The topic “Road Safety” is important and widespread. We live in Saint Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia. The traffic here is heavy and sometimes it’s difficult to get anywhere. Every day pupils have to walk the distance from home to school and usually this isn’t a safe way. They cross streets, go to school by bus or cycle. That’s why we have chosen the problem of children’s road safety behaviour.
We’ve decided to find out common mistakes that children make crossing streets. We created a short survey to choose traffic rules that cause difficulties or our pupils were interested in. Our target public was the pupils from our school. We created a simple questionnaire and tested about 60 pupils.
After a short analysis we came to the conclusion that pupils from our school knew traffic rules quite well but some questions caused difficulties as there were mistakes. We highlighted and paid our attention to them and after a short brainstorming, decided to create a video, which shows correct behaviour in these situations, as children like watching videos and the process of making videos in fun and captivating.
The initiatives
We created a video to show pupils’ major mistakes. It was a useful experience to try ourselves as actors, cameramen, screenwriters and a director. When our video was ready we showed the results of the test, watched our video and had a short discussion. Pupils found the rule about headphones very informative because some of them were crossing streets without putting it away. We gave them advice and we believe that we raised awareness of children on responsible road safety behaviour.
In order to spread information about road safety behaviour among young pupils we created a road safety display board where we presented traffic rules which can be useful on the eve of summer holidays.
Finally, we created a web site to share our experience, our project and to draw people’s attention to the problem of road safety. There you can find information about us, our project and its results. There is an online test where people can check out their knowledge on traffic rules, find useful tips or traffic rules and enjoy our video. Moreover, there is a feedback section, where we put a video and ask people to find out which traffic rule is broken where, and give us their opinion on the reasons why people usually do that.
Each person can find the link to our project on the official school website and follow it. We hope it can help to attract people’s attention to the problem of road safety. Moreover, we will be able to add useful information or develop this project in the future.
