Prevention of Child Road Traffic Injuries Speech at a Parent Meeting, March 2015

Prevention of Child Road Traffic Injuries
Presentation at Parent Meeting — March 2015

Dear Parents!
We have spoken many times with you about road safety, and we will never stop repeating it.

Children are our future. How we teach them to behave on the road determines whether they will be able to care for their own children in the future.

In 2014, there were 112 road traffic accidents (RTAs) in Belgorod Oblast involving children, in which 10 children died and 112 were injured. The number of RTAs involving minors increased by 3, the number of fatalities increased by 2, and the number of injuries by 4. The rise in incidents involving children was noted in the Alexeevsky District, Stary Oskol Urban District, Belgorodsky, Ivnyansky, Korochansky, Krasnoyaruzhsky, Chernyansky Districts, and in the city of Belgorod. Due to the failure of children themselves to follow safety rules, 33 RTAs occurred, resulting in 6 deaths and 27 injuries among children.

In the Stary Oskol Urban District alone, 23 RTAs involving children occurred in 2014, resulting in 2 deaths and 21 injuries.

Injuries sustained in road traffic accidents are extremely dangerous. As a rule, car-related injuries are at least a "double" impact: first, the vehicle hits the child and knocks them onto the hood, and then the child falls onto the road surface. This results in two impacts — with the vehicle and with the asphalt. Injuries caused by sharp edges, corners, or hard parts of the vehicle are very serious, but the second impact is even more dangerous because, during the fall, children most often hit their heads.

Special attention should be given to RTAs involving minors under 16 years of age operating motor vehicles. There were 12 such accidents registered, in which 3 minors died and 11 were injured.

On October 31 at 10:30 PM in Stary Oskol, near building 5 on Zhukov microdistrict, a 42-year-old driver of a VAZ-21102, while making a left turn, collided with an Irbis scooter driven by Maksim Grinev, born on August 30, 1999, a 9th-grade student at Secondary School No. 27 in Stary Oskol. As a result of the accident, the 15-year-old was hospitalized with injuries. The presence of such incidents speaks to irresponsibility and lack of proper parental supervision.

Another common cause of RTAs is pedestrian collisions.

A pedestrian is struck when a driver, due to various factors, sees the person on the road too late. The main reported reason is poor visibility of the pedestrian. Nearly 90% of pedestrian collisions occur at night or under poor visibility conditions, when the driver sees the pedestrian at the last moment and cannot react in time to avoid the accident. Snow, fog, rain, and shadows from trees and bushes can make pedestrians difficult to see even on a well-lit road.

Convince your children that it is in the pedestrian’s best interest to make their presence on the road known, even when using a designated crosswalk, giving the driver enough time to brake. Reflective elements can be standalone items — bracelets, pendants, stickers attached to clothing — or part of special vests equipped with reflective strips.

At our school, we regularly monitor whether students have reflective elements. However, some students and their parents still do not understand why children need to wear these items — they "forget" the band at home, hide it in their bag, or even openly state they don’t have one. It is the responsibility of parents to constantly check before leaving the house that their child is protected from the dangers lurking on the road.

Help us protect your children!