Parents can play a vital role to influence safe road behaviour among children from an early age. SANRAL’s Development Planner, Elna Fourie, says: “Youngsters follow the example set by their elders and the behaviour they will themselves display as adults, is often determined at an early age.”
The global trend in road safety and awareness campaigns is to create partnerships between road authorities, law enforcement, civil society and communities in the broader efforts to reduce collisions and cut down the number of fatalities.
SANRAL’s own programmes are influenced by the Decade of Action for Road Safety launched by the United Nations and the World Health Organisation. In its objective for ‘safer road users’ the UN Action Plan calls for increased awareness about road safety risk factors and campaigns that can help change attitudes and opinions.
“Knowledge gives me power,” says Fourie. “If I have the knowledge about the risks associated with safety on the road I know how to act and I can plan my behaviour.”
SANRAL has already built a strong partnership with the Department of Basic Education, provincial and district authorities, as well as
individual schools that form part of its ongoing research and awareness programme. This year will see the roll-out of specially developed teaching aids and course material, which will be supported by workshops and mentoring programmes for teachers. But it wants to reach a broader audience by including parents – and even grandparents – in the workshops that will
be held in the communities convey the correct messages about safety to the younger generation. Fourie says SANRAL’s programmes are based on action research that it has conducted in partnership with the University of Pretoria in communities located close to hazardous locations on the national road network. This leads to an ongoing evaluation
of data and feedback from educators around identified schools. The intention is to equip them with knowledge about the specific road safety risks associated with children – especially as pedestrians and passengers on the taxis that ferry them to and from schools. Once parents are aware of the risks, they will
be able to and researchers on the impact of the programmes. New course material for teachers have been developed to reflect the experience gained over the past few years. One of the objectives is to integrate road safety awareness into the broader education curriculum – especially in the later primary and secondary
Search for innovative road safety solutions
Creative thinking about road safety
among high school learners will be
put to the test in a new initiative
introduced by SANRAL.
Learners in Grades 10 to 12 will
be encouraged to look at road
safety issues within their own
communities and to come up with
innovative and practical solutions.
It will be launched at schools that
participate in SANRAL road safety
programmes. They will be guided
by multidisciplinary teams from the
University of Pretoria.
Elna Fourie says the intention is to
encourage senior learners to think
creatively about road safety within
their own environment. It fits in with
SANRAL’s approach to include road
safety awareness and education
across a number of subjects in the
school curriculum.
The programme will stretch over
three years and the participating
schools will progress through
provincial rounds to an eventual
national competition.
stages. The education specialists
are developing material containing
road safety messages that can be
used in mainstream subjects such as
mathematics, science, geography and
life skills.
“We want to go beyond awareness to
a stage where all the information that
is offered to children through teachers,
parents, civil society and social media –
leads to changed behaviour and greater
safety on our roads,” Fourie says.
Building South Africa through better roads