Our objective with this project is to emphasize the importance of yellow lines for handicapped people who experiences difficulties in traffic and how they are continuously violated and neglected.
The ideas
As you know Istanbul is one of Turkey’s most crowded cities with its population of 14.657.434 people. This dense population causes also to traffic density and gives rise to faults made in traffic. These faults leave others in tight spots during their everyday lives. People without hindrances experience such difficulties in traffic; can you imagine what handicapped people experience I such an environment? Moreover during the video shoots that we made, some said that they don’t even want to go out. According to the data provided by the World Health Organization, There are 8,5 million handicapped people in turkey. Besides, there are 78,000 visually handicapped children in Turkey. Naturally, they get more affected than us. We as Beykoz Anatolian High School wanted to do something about this issue. We especially wanted to emphasize how drivers and pedestrians that violate their already difficult situation. The yellow lines oriented towards visually handicapped people are continuously violated and neglected!
In a widespread manner, vehicles park on these lines or obstacles are placed on them. Therefore, visually handicapped people experience difficulties in traffic.
The initiatives
We started to introduce ourselves under the name Yellow Line Hunters. We announced what handicapped people experience in traffic via the social media and theatres. Our school is located within the Beykoz district in Istanbul. There are 691 students at our school. We arranged white canes and eye patches for the students in order to increase awareness towards the difficulties that handicapped people experience in traffic. We asked the students at our school to go to the service shuttles from inside the school by using a white cane after blindfolding them. Thus, we were able to test how much we are able to understand what handicapped people experience in traffic. Following the activity 74% of the people who participated the questionnaire said that they would contribute the studies at the school.
We made presentations that emphasize the importance of yellow lines for handicapped people in classrooms. Duru Theatre located in Kadıköy gave us the opportunity to make our “Yellow Line Hunters” presentation prior to their show. Real public service announcements are those made in theaters, not on TVs.
We turned our school emblem that has been designed by Beykoz Anatolian High School students and teachers in to a rosette. We also opened a stand at our school. We organized badge-pinning ceremonies with students after repeating our Yellow Line Hunters Oath together with them. Thus we enabled them to become a Yellow Line Hunter. Besides we created social media accounts in order to reach more people. Our accounts on Facebook is ‘’Sarı Çizgi Avcıları’’ and ‘’saricizgiavcisi’’ on Instagram. On the other hand, we asked the participants to take and share photographs of yellow line violations that they see.
According to us, road safety can be enabled only by orienting vehicles and pedestrians in a correct manner. We as Beykoz Anatolian High School wanted to create solutions for the difficulties that handicapped people experience in their everyday lives. In the simplest term, we sometimes witness people arguing about who is going to sit at the window side seat. However, visually handicapped people do not have such a choice. We shall never forget that providing solutions and increasing the joy of living of handicapped people is an indicator of how much value we give to society.
