Pune: Road Safety Education To Be Added To Student’s Curriculum

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Mehab Qureshi
Pune, October 24, 2020: Statistics have shown that many students are injured daily because of lack of awareness about road safety rules. To curb this, the Commissionerate of Transport’s Road Safety Cell and Directorate of Primary Education has started an initiative to impart road safety education to students through their schools curriculum.

Keeping this in mind, a webinar was held on October 20 to discuss the issues. The webinar was inaugurated by JB Patil, Joint Commissioner of the  Road Safety Cell, Transport Department.

Expressing his sentiments, Patil said that the importance of road safety has now become a basic human need, and the role of teachers is critical to bring road safety education to every home and every household. “Driving is not just about road safety. It is about creating good pedestrians, commuters and trained drivers,” he said.

In this seminar, Sanjay Sasane, Pune Deputy RTO, gave detailed guidance on the concept of ‘Train the Trainers’. Harshda Jamba of World Resource Institute gave information about road accidents in this seminar.

“India accounts for 12% of the world’s accidents. In India, 43 children under the age of 18 die every day. Deaths from road accidents are high due to overspeeding and drunk driving”, she informed.

She also stressed the need to create ‘School Safety Zones’ in schools, emphasizing the need for road safety.  “It is the need of the hour to create awareness among the students about road safety. If such a student takes road safety education out of school in the future, his productivity will not only increase but also contribute to building a disciplined society along with road observance”, she said.

Under this concept, it is planned to impart training on road safety to selected school teachers at the district level and taluka level with the help of officials from the Department of Transport. These trained teachers will train the students in the school.

Several programs will be added to the student’s curriculum, such as textbook lessons, poems, games, educational trips, oratory-essay-painting competitions, monologues, short videos and morning walks.

The webinar was attended by various officers of the education department, headmasters, teachers, NGO officials and officials of the motor vehicle department.  Vishal Solanki, Commissioner of Education, DS Jagtap, Director Primary Education, Dinkar Temkar, Joint Director of Primary Education, were present in the webinar.