Raising Parents? Awareness of Road Safety for Their Children. ?Way to Go? – Road Safety Information for Parents
Keywords: Education
ARSRPE
Submission Date: 2001
Abstract
An important component of child road safety is making parents aware of their responsibilities towards practising safe behaviours for children to follow. Children are educated in the classroom about road safety issues and the skills needed to negotiate varying traffic situations, but who educates the parents?
Transport SA have developed ?Way To Go? to provide road safety information to parents. 'Way To Go' covers 22 different road safety topics with information for parents on the front and a child activity relevant to the child?s primary year level on the reverse side. To ensure that parents take notice of this information, children are encouraged to complete the activity at home with the parents? help. The answers for all the child activities are contained in the front of the sheet. The distribution of 'Way To Go' is through the primary school classroom and can be easily linked to the school?s road safety plan.
A market research company tested the parent information by using five focus groups comprising parents of primary school aged children, covering metropolitan and rural areas and private and public primary schools.
The child activities were designed by Transport SA staff and were reviewed by eighteen primary school teachers in a full day workshop. Almost all the recommendations suggested by the teachers were included in the final product.
Initial reactions from schools are that it will be a valuable inclusion into their road safety plan.