On October 29, 2020, the RADAR project implemented the fourth Road Safety Expert Group (RSEG) meeting on Thematic Area 4 – Road Safety near Schools.

More than 50 road safety experts and representatives of road infrastructure safety sector that are part of the RADAR project Road Safety Expert Group and other transport stakeholders actively participated in the last RSEG meeting. Through the RSEG meetings, the RADAR project offers opportunities for converging policies in a transnational strategy, reinforcing the need for harmonisation at the EU level.

Due to the Covid-19 situation mobility patterns have been transformed and changed completely. According to Marko Ševrović, European Institute of Road Assessment – EuroRAP (EIRA-EuroRAP), who opened the meeting, “it is very hard to know what the future will bring and what the travel patterns will look like in the next years”. This especially concerns the road safety around or in the neighbourhood of schools.

Road traffic injury the leading cause of death for children 

According to World Health Organisation, road traffic injury is currently the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5–29 years, signalling a need for a shift in the current child health agenda, which has largely neglected road safety.

Schools and the areas around them attract many children daily. The traffic environment around schools consists of one of the most complex traffic environments regularly encountered by children. Children are not always equipped with the appropriate skills to deal with such an environment, resulting in an increased risk of road crash incidents. Consequently, safe, and accessible routes from home to school and vice versa are required.

Drivers responsible for 63% of road traffic accidents in school areas 

During the RSEG TA4 meeting Marko Ševrović, EIRA-EuroRAP, presented goals of the RSEG and TA4 and Stelios Efstathiadis, Transport Solutions, dedicated his presentation to the Road Safety near Schools Draft Report. Rafaela Machado, International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) shared the first evidence-based tool for measuring, managing, and communicating the risk children are exposed to on a journey to school – Star Rating for Schools. Within the country-specific State of the Part section of the meeting, Klaus Machata, Austrian Road Safety Boards and Klemen Filipič, Automobile and Motorcycle Association of Slovenia, shared best practice examples for road safety near schools.

Bojan Jovanović, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, shared the main results of the research that has been performed is that based on this performed analysis on selected school zones in Croatia. According to research, drivers are responsible for the occurrence of 63 % of road traffic accidents occurred in school areas and the remaining 37 % of road traffic accidents were caused by children since they were not obeying the rules and not paying attention in road traffic.

It was also determined that many parents drive their children to school, but almost 30 % of parents stopped their vehicles in dangerous and illegal places in the school zones and therefore endanger the safety of other road users. Results have also shown that close to 30 % of children very often cross the pedestrian crossings during a red light, also it was found that 60 % of children are walking along the road or cross the road while using the mobile phone and headphones so they cannot see or hear coming vehicles in time to make the proper action.

The results of the performed analysis have shown that about 42 % of children do not pay any attention to traffic when they are crossing the road and almost 35 % of drivers do not stop at existing pedestrian crossings. It can be concluded that both children and parents do not have the correct perception of the responsibilities and the importance of knowing and obeying traffic rules and are not aware of the actual risk to which the children are exposed in school zones.

Up to 25 % increase in traffic near schools 

Similar were the findings within the Automobile Club of Moldova’s (ACM) pilot action that was focused on the pilot school assessment programme in two cities. According to the Serghei Diaconu, ACM: “it seems that the flow of the parents that are bringing the children to school increased dramatically [due to the covid-19] – 20 – 24 % of the increase. It seems that the parents are not trusting public transport and in the urban area the per cent is even higher – up to 40 %. What does that mean? In the rush hours, we have more cars in the school area, more cars that are trying to park in the drop-off locations and it is a similar situation in the daytime. It is interesting to see how this increase in the number of cars and parents bringing their children to school increased also on the change of the driver’s behaviour.”

Martin Winkelbauer, Austrian Road Safety Board commented that: “children lose their competence of moving and getting along the traffic, learning how to move on the roads, if parents just drop them in front of the schools.”

Efstathiadis added that we need to “take into consideration the age of the students approaching the school and the infrastructure should be adopted to their capacities and capabilities according to that. In the kindergarten children would most probably arrive with their guardians’ car, children with an age 8 or more could arrive by foot and again with a guardian, so the pedestrian facilities should be wide enough to facilitate all; and lastly students in the age 15 or 16 most probably would come to school by themselves alone and on that hand, we should take care of the area around schools."

But what is an infrastructure role there? Can we make infrastructure more understandable for children?

According to Winkelbauer: “Changing the infrastructure in a self-explaining way can do a lot, but even to be self-explaining you need some education. It strongly depends on the age group you are addressing. You need basic education to be able to understand and realise what the self-explaining infrastructure can tell you. This is where we have to motivate the parents to provide this basic knowledge and educate their children – set up a basic set of rules and things you have to know to be later able to understand self-explaining infrastructures.”  

“What we all agree about is that education is crucial for the road safety long term aspect”, added Vanina Popova, Bulgarian Association for Road Safety. However, not nearly enough, according to Diaconu, “we need to educate teachers, parents and children.”

The RSEG meetings were deployed on four thematic areas: Safer Road Investment Plans; Provisions for Vulnerable Road Users (Pedestrians and Cyclists); Smart Speed Management Infrastructure and Road Safety Near Schools. Based on the discussions and meetings, reports on all four thematic areas are being used as the basis of the Danube Infrastructure Road Safety Improvement Strategy (DIRSIS), setting vision and objectives for road safety in the region, and Country Specific Action Plans (DIRSIAP) with detail of actions, time plan and contribution needed to achieve the DIRSIS.

More about Road Safety Expert Group meetings HERE.