Primary School Students Involved in Many Traffic Accidents

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Primary School Students Involved in Many Traffic Accidents

It seems that parents of children in primary school have to be concerned traffic accidents morethan anything else when ensuring their children's safety.
Death rates by traffic accident are highest among first-year primary school students. According to the National Police Agency, 164 primary school students died in traffic accidents in 1998 alone. These 164 deaths comprise 34.7 percent of all traffic accident deaths. This was the highest percentage posted.
First-year primary school children made up 30.5 percent (11,159 people) of all primary school casualties resulting from traffic accident between 1996 and 1998.
Sixty-five percent of the total number of children's traffic accident deaths occured while they were walking.
Citizens' Coalition for Safety head Heo Uk said, "The children entering primary school now are in greater danger because they are not familiar enough with road safety." Heo suggests that parents make 'a traffic safety map,' with the safest route to school for their children to take clearly mapped out.
Parents should highlight dangerous places on the map such as where traffic is very heavy, where many illegally parked cars are usually found, crosswalks without signal lights and so on.
The Citizens' Coalition for Safety began their campaign 'Open School for Children's Traffic safety' (www.go119.com) on the Internet on March 7, where they list measures which can help prevent first year primary school students from being involved in traffic accidents.
On this site there is information about the most common types of children's traffic accidents, measures to prevent accidents, and places where children can be educated in accident avoidance.
There are also guidelines directed toward teachers who want to educate their students about traffic safety. Call (02)732-7151 for more information.





by Seong Si-yun

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