A traffic accident. Deputy Prime Minister Trương Hoà Bình has asked the Ministry of Education and Training to strengthen education of traffic rules and traffic culture for all students from pre-school to high school. — Photo infonet.vn

HÀ NỘI – Deputy Prime Minister Trương Hoà Bình has asked the Ministry of Education and Training to strengthen education of traffic rules and traffic culture for all students from pre-school to high school.

The ministry will be in charge of guiding its departments in cities and provinces to strengthen dissemination of traffic knowledge, said the Deputy PM who is also chairman of the National Traffic Safety Committee.

Bình made his request at an online conference held on Tuesday to review traffic safety management in the second quarter of this year.

Traffic safety is already taught at many pre-schools. Nguyễn Hồng Thanh, a teacher at Tân Hải Pre-school in southern Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu Province’s Tân Thành District, said traffic knowledge had been combined in games, images and songs.

"Children are taught to recognise means of transport, some basic traffic signals and traffic lights when playing games or learning a new song," she said.

At Ward 8 Pre-school in Vũng Tàu City, traffic models such as crossroads and traffic roundabouts have been set up to teach children to obey traffic laws.

Lê Thị Cần, the school’s principal, said the use of models had been effective in helping children remember traffic rules.

Child-related accidents

At the conference, Deputy PM Bình has asked the ministry to co-operate with the National Traffic Safety Committee to build a kit of traffic culture for high school students. The kit would be provided to all secondary schools in the academic year 2017-18.

The decision follows the results of a study that found that high school students were involved as either drivers or victims in 90 per cent of child-related traffic accidents in Hà Nội.

The study, conducted among 2,390 high school students in the capital, showed that driving in wrong lanes, speeding, and careless driving were the main accident causes.

In the study, more than 52 per cent of students said they drove electric bikes or motorbikes to school. The rest either walked or biked.

About 106,440 electrical bikes and 100,582 electrical motorbikes were reportedly available in families of high school students in Hà Nội.

The study found that up to 33 per cent of students walking to schools admitted that they had not learnt how to walk safely, and 27 per cent of students driving vehicles to school said that they had not learned about safe driving skills.

Vice head of National Committee for Road Safety Khuất Việt Hùng said that high school students were the group most vulnerable to traffic accidents. Thus, measures on improving traffic safety for them were important.

The study was jointly organised by the National Committee for Road Safety and the Việt Nam Association of Motorbike Manufacturers (VAMM).

Nearly 5,000 traffic fatalities this year

Nearly 5,000 people have been killed and 9,300 injured due to traffic accidents since early this year, a drop of between 5.2 per cent and 10.2 per cent compared to the same period of last year, the National Traffic Safety Committee has announced. Nguyễn Trọng Thái from the committee secretariat said the number of deaths decreased by 263 people and the number of injuries by 1,050 people.

In terms of traffic violations, Thái said traffic police found more than 2.4 million violators, fining more than VNĐ1.5 billion (US$66,079), seizing 22,700 vehicles and revoking nearly 220,000 driving licences. – VNS