We decided to focus on the issue by analyzing the environment around our school and the neighbouring schools. Our mission is to reduce 'turn-signals neglecting' and to raise awareness.
The ideas
When we say road safety in traffic, some things come to our minds immediately such as not wearing a seat belt, using cellphones while driving, drinking alcohol or overspeed but there is a bigger problem in traffic ‘Turn-Signals & Blinkers Neglecting’!
We communicate in traffic with signals & blinkers. Thanks to signals, other drivers know how we act in traffic. For example we use the blinkers while changing the lanes, while parking, while overtaking and at roundabouts. If there is no communication, traffic flow is broken and accidents happen. Signaling is necessary for both road safety and road sharing.
Turn-signal neglecting is a very big problem that causes more crashes than distracted driving. The study done by the experts found that drivers fail to signal a staggering 48 percent of the time, resulting in 2 million collisions a year — more than twice the 950,000 crashes linked to distracted driving such as texting or yakking on a cellphone.
Why so many drivers don’t use blinkers? The answer is very simple “Laziness’’. They just don’t care. This sounds awful but this is the way it is.
Drivers who don’t use turn-signals & blinkers are real dangers for everyone! We find the most dangerous aspect of the road is drivers changing lanes without using signals. One of our colleagues said that ‘’I'm a pedestrian and you know how hard it is to cross a road on a roundabout while coming to school- How many times I nearly got hit by a car which had not use their signals. This example was the milestone for us and we wanted to tackle this issue in our project.
We believe that proper use of signals & blinkers may prevent millions of crashes nationwide. We care a lot about the traffic culture. We could greatly improve conditions on our roads by simply being more courteous. That means obeying red lights, not changing lanes frequently, and when we do — turning on blinkers! We focused on the problem and prepared a survey about the awareness ‘usage of signals & blinkers in traffic. We applied the questionnaire approximately to 170 people. While analyzing them, we got very worrying results but this motivated us to keep our shoulder to the wheel. (you can see the questions and results in the PowerPoint)
The initiatives
First of all; we believe that willingness and eagerness bring more happiness, success, effort and enjoy in such works so our team leader made an announcement about the project in our classes and then as volunteers we gathered to talk the details. After the exchange of ideas, we decided to study over ‘the raising awareness in the usage of signals&blinkers in traffic’ and we named our team as ‘’SIGNAL SEEKERS’
We wanted to produce permanent and attractive solutions for all people from 7 to 77 years old.
If so, what can we do to raise the awareness? We brainstormed and did a ‘to do list’
- Preparing ‘’e Twinning traffic project’’ for primary and secondary school students
- Preparing Posters for schools and other institutions
- Preparing Slogans corner in our school
- Preparing Bookmarks for all people
-To organize online safe driving competitions between students
- Preparing and sending basic Traffic Signs for primary school students (for exhibition)
- Preparing Direction (turn left-turn right) wristbands for children
- Preparing games with Balloon for teaching turn signals and directions
- Preparing Stickers for all vehicles
- Preparing and broadcasting ‘Happy Traffic Week’ video in different languages and in sign language for the disabled. (youtube)
- Visiting The Police Office in our district in the National Traffic Week (04-11 May)
- Visiting Renault Mais in our district in the National Traffic Week
- Creating a facebook page : ‘Signal Seekers are in harness/Sinyal arayıcıları görev başında’
eTwinning is a free online community for schools in Europe which allows you to find partners and collaborate on projects within a secure network and platform. Through participating in eTwinning, your school will be able to: enrich learning and motivation of pupils (aged between 4 and 18) and staff. We (25 different schools from Turkey,Azerbaijan and Romania ) came together and launched a new Project ‘TRAFİKTE BİZ DE VARIZ /WE ARE ALSO IN TRAFFIC’ related to General Traffic Rules, Road Safety for all and Usage of signals & blinkers. Thanks to this project we had the opportunity to reach lots of children.We prepared and sent materials (basic traffic signs-bookmarks-balloons-masks) and games for them.We shared our opinions and we tried to draw their attentions because we know that children are the best observers. Activities of our project with our partners were published in a national newspaper ‘HÜRRİYET’.
In our spare times; we designed the project’s bookmarks, posters, slogans and stickers using Canva and Word Art programmes in our school library. We used our creativity and set a budget from our team leader’s salary so we combined our powers and printed them in the printing house and then delivered 600 bookmarks,1000 waterproof stickers for vehicles and 15 colorful posters for our school and for other institutions. We also created slogans corner in the schools.
We organized some online safe driving game competitions in our classes and the winners won chocolates from us. These activities were very enjoyable and instructive for the students.
We thought that people should learn the directions (turning left and right) from an early age. They should know their responsibilities as both a pedestrian and a driver. We prepared balloon games, direction signs and wristbands for children. They enjoyed a lot while learning.
We prepared waterproof stickers for the vehicles that say on it ‘Let’s obey the traffic rules and let’s use the blinkers’ in Turkish. We delivered nearly 1000 pieces of them to the teachers in our school, to the car owners, to our neighbours and relatives, to the citizens we met on the road randomly. Hopefully more people will use their blinkers when they see our stickers on everyone’s car. We are sure that it will be very useful and effective to raise the awareness and attract the attention of other drivers.
We prepared and published a video in Youtube ‘Your Ideas Your Initiatives BORNOVA ANADOLU LİSESİ’ Happy Traffic Week. It was viewed by lots of people in a short time and if it continues like that, we are sure that it will be viewed nearly by 10000 people. Our efforts give us a positive feedback and it makes us happy and pleased. We also created a Facebook page so you can follow us from there.
In the National Traffic Week, we visited both Renault Mais Bornova dealer and The Police Office in our district. They welcomed us very well.They were very kind and sincere. We talked about our project and activities. We gave them some parts of our materials such as bookmarks, stickers and posters. They will deliver our products to the customers and citizens. The Police Officers gave us some leaflets related to road safety. We handed them out to the students. Our traffic week activity was published in a national newspaper ‘POSTA’.
In conclusion; we enjoyed a lot during the project. We saw the power of collaboration and it was a very good experience for us. We took concrete and important steps in our campaign to reduce the wrong habits in traffic. We contributed to not only traffic consciousness but also social and positive developments of traffic culture. We know that traffic culture is a legacy passed down from generation to generation. We believe that we have begun to raise the awareness between citizens and finally we say : Drivers don’t read minds, please SIGNAL!
