Intense pedestrian activity adjacent to some sections of the South African national road network where unprotected road users are exposed to greater risk of being involved in traffic collisions has been the concern of the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL). Against this background, SANRAL designed with technical support from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) a holistic road safety programme anchored in education, skill's transfer and training of teachers, schoolchildren and the community leaders. CSIR Transportek was then tasked to implement this road safety education programme in some of the South African provinces that included KwaZulu-Natal and Free State. The University Interdisciplinary Accident Research Centre (UNIARC) of KwaZulu-Natal was tasked with the main assignment of evaluating this road safety programme. Out of the 36 schools that were involved in the road safety programme in the Hlabisa District, a random selection of 17 schools was included in the evaluation of this programme. This total sample was further stratified into nine (9) primary and eight (8) high schools. A random selection of estimated 20 pupils from each school was made from programme participants for interviews. Finally, a total of 398 pupils were interviewed on checking the validated questionnaires for data analysis. Twenty five teachers, 94 community members and 3 Deputy Education Specialist inspectors participated in the survey. Results indicate that the Little and Informed Centres (L and ICs) for teaching road safety made a major impact as teachers view it as sharpened awareness on road safety (68 per cent) and improved evasive skills (32 per cent). Community members (85 per cent) and pupils (67 per cent) also concurred with teachers that L and ICs promote commendable road safety behaviour. The L and ICs are also reported good for identification of red spots (60 per cent) within the immediate environment of the school. This paper further demonstrates that these potent L and ICs benefits seem to be flawed by the apparent lack of road infrastructure sympathetic to vulnerable road users to practice their learnt and known road safety skills. It further supports theories that argue road safety education imparted in a classroom is not enough as other strategies such as tweaking the road environment such that vulnerable road users can practice their road safety skills (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see E217780.
Abstract