At the end of the summer holidays, children usually prepare their school bags and look forward to meeting their classmates again, while some look forward to sitting in their school desks for the first time. To ensure that their journey to school and home is safe, every year the police officers carry out various activities, which are defined in the prevention project Safe way to school and home.

Some activities, involving different services and organisations, take place even before the beginning of the school year, more intensively during the first days of classes and then throughout the entire school year.

Activities of police officers before the start of the school year

Before the start of the school year, police officers inspect road traffic signals on road links near schools and on school routes and, in case of irregularities, notify the road maintenance staff. Together with school management, they review or prepare plans for safe routes to school and propose possible changes to traffic arrangements. With local communities and organizations such as automobile associations, associations of drivers and car mechanics, councils for prevention and education in road traffic, etc., they check the possibilities for protecting children, especially in the first days of school. Police officers also obtain information on the daily organised transport of children to and from school.

Tighter speed controls, traffic calming and other activities during the first days of school

During the first days of school, police officers carry out tighter traffic control in the vicinity of schools, mainly with the aim of speed control and traffic calming. The latter is especially important during the first days of school, when children come to school and return home still completely playful and under the impression of vacation experiences. The police officers check the safe walking of children and crossing the road, the equipment of children with reflective bodies for greater safety in the event of reduced visibility, the equipment of 1st and 2nd grade students with yellow neckerchiefs, the faultlessness of bicycles, bicycles with an auxiliary motor and bicycles with a motor. They also regularly check the correct use of the safety helmet. At the beginning of the school year, they strictly control the technical faultlessness of the vehicles for transporting children and the use of seat belts and additional equipment for fastening children in the vehicles with which parents drive their children to school. They also prepare lectures on traffic safety for parents of first-graders. They give lectures to the pupils about traffic education and accompany them along the school routes, advising them and teaching them about the correct participation in traffic, while at the same time pointing out potential dangers.

Taking care of the safety of the youngest even during the school year

Even otherwise, during the school year, police officers check the faultlessness of buses for transporting children on trips and check their drivers (e.g. checking rest before driving, psychophysical condition of the driver, checking documents). They pay a lot of attention to supervising the organized school transport of children and the transport of children carried out by their parents. In improving traffic safety, police officers also cooperate with traffic education tutors and school management, as well as in the performance of bicycle tests.

Colouring book, posters

As part of the project, a coloring book for children Safely way to school and home was prepared years ago at the General Police Directorate, and a poster was made at the Kranj Police Directorate.

Art competition

For many years, the Nova Gorica Police Directorate has been joining the activities to improve the safety of children in traffic by organizing an art competition under the title Safe on the way to school and home, in the framework of which third-graders from all elementary schools in the area of the Directorate are invited to create art products on the topic of safe walking on the way to school. The committee, consisting of three professors of art education, selects the best of all submitted products, which are then exhibited in various institutions (libraries, cultural center, municipal buildings), and in December, the Nova Gorica Police Department organizes a ceremonial closing of the competition and presents symbolic prizes to the best authors.

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