Child road safety project celebrates 10th anniversary

A police officer promotes pedestrian safety education by playing games with students at Beijing's Tiyuguan Road Elementary School on May 8.  Photo by Wang Kaihao/chinadaily.com.cn

FedEx Express and Safe Kids China commemorated their 10th anniversary of jointly promoting children's pedestrian safety on Thursday and released a report reviewing the decade-long "Walk This Way" project, at Beijing's Tiyuguan Road Elementary School.

Safe Kids China is a branch of Safe Kids Worldwide, the world's first nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing accidental childhood injury. The "Walk This Way" project has expanded to more than 10,000 schools in 30 cities around China. More than 3.8 million students have attended lectures that include wide participation from other entities, such as police authorities, educational institutions and healthcare organizations, to increase children’s safety on roads.

According to the report, in 2005, 6,082 urban children aged from 1 to 15 were killed in pedestrian accidents, but such casualties decreased to 3,253 in 2012.

The program aims to expand further across China, including to rural areas, and to provide more detailed guidance for different traffic circumstances to control driving speeds near schools, and train children to be more attentive while walking.