Watch for children crossing

KRYVYI RIH — This Ukrainian city has hosted the one-month project “Watch for Children Crossing” for a number of year under the aegis of the local traffic police directorate (DAI), including lectures at the city’s various educational establishments. This endeavor was assisted by local schoolteachers, lecturers, and students. Young “traffic inspectors” (YuID) play a special role in this project. In fact, the YuIDs form a separate children’s movement launched back in the 1970s.

There is more to this one-month project than meetings at grade, high schools, and children’s homes. Its traffic rules program is aimed against preventing road accidents and a special approach with children’s performing groups in downtown Kryvy Rih during the rush hour. Thus, in early September, two such YuID groups — the Imperia teams from School No. 74 — performed in Kryvy Rih’s Quarter 95, the place of the city’s main interchange, as part of the project “Watch for Children Crossing.” By the way, this team is known to its amateurs [?] as Klakson and the five-grade members of Svitlofor team from Gymnasium No. 91. These teams have repeatedly won city, regional, and zonal YuID contests. This time, too, the interested passers-by paused to watch a performance by a children’s group that propagandized traffic rules in a their own special merry way, involving DAI officers, patrol cars, teachers, and children.

YuID’s latest performance was also different in that it featured a small photo exhibit featuring works by Kryvy Rih Pedagogic University’s art faculty students. The photos displayed a variety of traffic accidents that attracted keen public interest.

There is more to the local DAI’s road accident preventive effort than this one-month project with its performances. The officers of Kryvy Rih’s Traffic Control Directorate conduct regular work at the city’s high and grade schools as well as children’s homes. As a result, the rate of children’s body injuries caused by road accidents has dropped by 40 percent. The local DAI wants to reduce this rate to a minimum.

Militia Captain Volodymyr Kyslychenko of the Kryvy Rih DAI’s road accident prevention department says that “even if one of ten kids thinks about observing the traffic rules after what we have endeavored, then we can assume that our effort was effective.”