Bengaluru traffic police bat for road safety education in school curriculum

Bengaluru: The Bengaluru traffic police have written to the Department of School Education and Literacy to include lessons on road safety for primary and middle school students. 

This comes after their accident review of the past three years showed how over 63 per cent of the people accused in fatal road accidents in 2023 had obtained either only a primary, secondary or pre-graduate level of education. 

Similarly, nearly 62.3 per cent of victims were people who had obtained only a primary, secondary or pre-graduate level of education, many of which were self-accidents largely due to unsafe road behaviours. Additionally, between 2022 and 2023, fatal accidents caused by oneself have seen a 35 per cent increase from 98 to 133, among people who have obtained up to a pre-graduate level of education. 

Although the police note that this does not imply a causation relationship between education levels and accident risks, they are using this data to emphasise the need to include road safety in the school syllabus for children from the primary level. 

Therefore, they designed a mini-syllabus last year for students in classes 1 to 7 so that they can inculcate traffic rules and road safety measures from a young age, said M N Anucheth, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic). 

The department has received their application and will review the material to include in next year’s syllabus. 

B B Cauvery, Commissioner for Public Instruction, noted that this application had been sent to the Department of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT) for review. 

“We have told them to examine the application and the syllabus and send it back with any revisions. Regardless, it can only be included in school textbooks and their curriculum in the next revision cycle after we review it,” she said, noting that this would not happen for this academic year since the textbooks have already been sent to print. 

However, the Associated Managements of Private Schools in Karnataka (KAMS) was quick to note that this would have little impact without strict enforcement and parental involvement. 

“This can be a co-curricular activity or project. It isn’t advisable to include this in the curriculum that is already so loaded. Besides, if parents are by themselves violating the rules by allowing their children to use vehicles before the legal age, this education might not help much,” said D Shashi Kumar, president of the KAMS.