TRAFFIC SAFETY EDUCATION

Southland Times, Issue 24003, 19 December 1939, Page 16

TRAFFIC SAFETY EDUCATION

AMERICA TEACHES CHILDREN FULL-TIME CO-OPERATION WORK Whatever the future may hold for those who now compose and will compose the school population, all odds indicate that they will be better drivers and safer pedestrians than adults today (writes Russell E. Singer, general manager of the American Automobile Association, in the Christian Science Monitor). . For traffic safety education, he continues, has become a definite part of school curricula, and youngsters everywhere, from .kindergarten to high schools, are being taught sound practices for street and highway use, whether driving or walking. As a result, it is not unusual to find youngsters hardly in their teens urging adults to cross at the corner and follow other rules for self-protection. Thus the school educational programme, as distinct from general safety education, may properly be classified under three separate headings; first, kindergarten and elementary grade education; second, the school safety patrol movement, and third, driver and pedestrian education and driver training in high'schools. The latter is the newest phase of the programme, and is a more direct approach to improvement in traffic conditions.

CO-OPERATING AGENCY The American Automobile Association, while taking the leadership in planning traffic safety studies, preparing materials and furnishing advice and counsel to schools through its 750 affiliated motor clubs and branches, tets as a co-operating agency with schools and police authorities. Driver and pedestrian, education in the high schools has advanced more rapidly than, perhaps, any other phase of edv cation since schools first began to assume responsibilities formerly thought of as belonging wholly to the home. Why driver education and training in high schools? The answer is Jbvious to those aware of the seriousness of the traffic problem. In America 49 per cent, of all accident .fatalities involving persons in the 15 to 24 age group are due to motor accidents. In this age group is found the greatest number of new drivers. The whole programme of traffic safety education in the schools is in line with the conception of adjusting students to environment, in which they must face the practical problems of a day in which approximately 29,000,000 motor-vehicles are moving over streets and highways, with traffic congestion in cities an acute problem, with around 75,000 school buses daily transporting 3,150,000 children to some 32,000 schools during the school term. HIGH SCHOOL COURSE With a background of experience in elementary school safety education, and with assistance from the Automotive Safety Foundation, we undertook to develop a model high school course under the title of “Sportsmanlike Driving.” The-basis of the course is a series of textbooks and teaching manuals. This well-illustrated text material, prepared by educators in collaboration with traffic specialists, has been given widespread approval by school authorities. For example, James F. Rockett, Director of Education, State of Rhode Island, says: “It is of utmost importance that the motor-car drivers of tomorrow be taught safe habits of motor-vehicle operation while they are young. High schools everywhere are recognizing this, and training courses are rapidly being instituted.”

Evidence that Mr Rockett speaks with authority is found in Rhode Island records. Drivers’ licences for a group of 1027 students who had received training courses were set aside in the motorvehicle department, and over a long period of time, nearly three years, not a single one of these students has been adjudged guilty of an infraction of the motor laws.

The unprecedented spread of this

comparatively new field of education is evidenced by the fact that more than 5000 high schools—one-fifth of the country’s total—now offer some form of driver and pedestrian education. In fact, 20 states how require mandatory safety education in the schools, as a result of legislative enactments of Board Education regulations. Approximately 400,000 copies of the "Sportsmanlike Driver text pamphlets have already been placed in schools.