We wanted to emphasize upon the recent common cause of traffic accidents: using smartphones while driving or crossing the streets for pedestrians. We wanted to raise awareness throughout a short film and a presentation about it.
The ideas
Every week for two hours, we came together in a class, put the ideas together and brainstorm on them. We talked about road safety during the lessons and made group projects such as debates on how to solve the faults in traffic. We talked about the faults of drivers at first. We told that drivers don't use their seat belts, they don't pay attention to the pedestrian paths, they use phones while driving which causes accidents but as we discuss about it more, we realised that pedestrians also use mobile phones on the streets. Because these days, people mostly use their mobile phones everywhere and even on the streets. We searched the rate of the accidents people have recently had and we found out that %50 of the accidents happen because of using mobile phones, we were really surprised. We didn't think it would be that much. We thought that we should pay attention to this behavior in traffic and maybe this way we can warn and change the wrong behaviors of pedestrians and drivers.
The initiatives
We decided to make a short film about the dangers of using smartphones while driving or crossing the streets. We wanted it to be as creative as it can be. We used the private car of our school and we requested our security to be the driver in our film. We made the film on the street of our school so that it was very close and easy for us. The IT Deparment of our school helped us a lot, they helped us using the camera and making/editing the film. We downloaded some soundtrack themes from the film from youtube. Our art department helped us on painting the t-shirt of the boy in red during the film. When we were done with the short film we showed it to the classes from Primary to High School and we took photos, we raised awareness and we learned that even the primary kids warned their parents at home about not using smartphones in traffic. Secondary school kids prepared big posters about "No phones in traffic" and they made a parade showing it to the whole school teachers, students, principles and staff in the corridors. Some of our primary kids even thought that the accident in the short film was real, they got really excited and involved in by making posters.
During this challenge of Renault, we learned a lot about the faults of drivers and pedestrians and the reasons of traffic accidents. This challenge broadened our horizon on traffic problems all over our country. We learned the importance of teamwork as a whole school because we got the help of all the deparments even our security. We had fun filming and we realised that we can implement a project from the begining to the end. Not only all the students of our school but also all the parents got aware of the importance of not using mobile phones in traffic because the students also shared our slogan and idea at home. It felt good to deal with realistic problems of the world and it was a pleasure for us to get involved in solving them. It made us feel not like a teenager but like an adult.
