Every year in Canada, drivers kill 16 child pedestrians and 5 child cyclists. They also injure 1,300 and 700 respectively. Sadly most of these incidents are preventable and we can improve road safety to make it safer for children to walk or ride a bicycle in our community.
Is School Bureaucracy Part of the Problem?
Witness the difficulties faced by the Parents Advisory Committee at Ecole Oceanside Elementary School. They simply wanted a school crossing guard at a busy intersection at the edge of the school grounds. Two years of effort later and they are no closer to the implementation of their wishes. What do you do?
Parachute Wants to Help
Elementary Road Safety is a program designed to make school communities safer by implementing evidence-based solutions that will address issues within each community that adopts the program.
What the Program Does
The program outlines a set of steps and resources for communities that wish to improve safety in their school zones and increase the number of children walking, cycling, or wheeling to and from school.
This short video describes the problem and provides some advice. It introduces the Elementary Road Safety program for you to use in solving school zone safety issues.
Get the Elementary Road Safety Toolkit
Free downloadable resources for the program include:
- Site Audit Form
- Driver and Pedestrian Behaviour Checklist
- Observational Counts Form
- Caregiver Survey
It Requires Commitment
Parachute cautions that it will take 2 to 3 years of effort to allow time for research, consultation, work with local officials, implementation of safety measures, and assessment if those measures make a difference.
Source for Contacts
If you are considering the use of these tools to increase road safety at your school, you may wish to visit the Parachute site. Schools that have taken part in the program are listed under the media heading. Contact them and ask if they think that the effort was worthwhile.
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