Students who walk to school often have to deal with traffic, weather conditions and other distractions along the way. Every hour, nearly 150 children between ages 0 and 19 are treated in emergency departments for injuries sustained in motor vehicle crashes. More children ages 5 to 19 die from crash-related injuries than from any other type of injury. In this project which was supported by the Global Alliance of Road Safety NGOs as a follow up activity after the Alliance Advocate Training Program in New Delhi in Nov 2018, road safety situation around 8 primary schools in Tehran and Mashhad cities were assessed using the Star Rating for Schools (SR4S) methodology.
For school assessment, different data for 8 schools such as traffic volume, number of students, operational speed, road width, crossing facilities, etc were gathered and using the iRAP SR4S application safety scores were calculated.
The local road authority last year had a plan for schools’ safety prioritization using their own method (done by a consultant) and the interesting point was that after comparing the results from SR4S and their method, they found SR4S more accurate and reliable. we approached local road authority managers and in fact, we were so lucky that last year their safe schools program was delayed and we had a chance to negotiate about the schools’ priority. Safety improvement treatments were done in 4 schools with lowest stars and reassessment of schools showed meaningful safety enhancement both in allocated scores and star rating.
The safety score for Shohada, Imam Ali and Azmoodeh School were 243,192 and 65 respectively that decreased to 37, 11 and 10 after treatment. In SR4S it means the start rating for these 1-star schools has been improved to 3,4 and 2-star respectively.
The used School Sign, Delineation, Speed Bump, Road Studs, On-road thermoplastic school sign to improve the safety of schools. The behavior of road users is the factor must be considered as well and education and enforcement still have their key roles for saving more lives on the road.
We had fruitful meetings with local office of Ministry of Education that apart from our routine road safety education for school children, led to a training session for school teachers. Interview with school authorities and some of parents helped us know the most important concerns on road safety and recognize some of the root causes that safety problems stem from them.
