Our idea was to make students aware on how they are being careless while walking on the streets and thinking that nothing will happen or that cars will stop if necessary. We created a quiz about road safety, using a QR-CODE and we shared it in social networks to make people reflect on their own behaviors as pedestrians and road users and the importance of keeping themselves and others safe.
Tes Idées
Nowadays, even with the amounts of information we can access, a lot of people don't know or don't respect the traffic laws. There are many stressed drivers that break those rules in "the heat of the moment" and many distracted and hasty pedestrians that don't pay any attention on the streets. That doesn't help at all.
Most of the students of our school go home or to restaurants on foot to have lunch and we noticed that most of them had already had some kind of situation while on the streets, like cars passing while the sign is red, not slowing down while passing in front of the school, driving too fast and dangerously while in front of the school and many other risk behaviors that we all know very well.
We have spoken with the students of our class on a live meeting using FORMS about how to act better and in a safer way while walking on the streets when going and returning from school. With our quiz "Do you walk safely in the street?", 725 people answered. What we could see and analyze is that most of students and people who answered the questions weren't used to pay attention while they are walking on the streets and this was worst with the ones that are also drivers. Most of them tend to cross the street without looking at both sides, they cross while the traffic signal is green or they cross running while there is a car coming from "very far" and they think that it is always possible to cross before the car getting where they are. Almost everyone answered that they use headphones or walk while looking at their cell phones and don't look at the streets or the crosswalk that they are walking on.
Tes initiatives
We decided to create something simple to make people think about different traffic situations, how they behave and learn about the safe and appropriate behaviors.
We created a quiz about traffic, using QR-CODE. It is short and quick to answer and show situations that happen on a daily basis and the person has to choose for each question the option that better fits its usual behavior. Some questions are focused on pedestrians/cyclists and others are focused on drivers. The best part is that the questions can be answered online so there is no close contact with other people (that is very important for the situation we are living). The quiz QR-CODE were attached to posters that were going to be put on bus stops through the city, but as we are on a quarantine, we've adapted and shared the questions through social media like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp to reach as many people as possible and 560 played the quiz.
With that we could conclude that, here in Brazil, it is necessary a stronger traffic education and traffic awareness for drivers and pedestrians in general because most of them don't care, don't know or pretend they know the rules and the punishment measures if they are involved in accidents because they haven’t obeyed the road safety rules. People have to start thinking that the other human being is someone's love, son, daughter, father, mother, friend or dear person and we have to take care of each other.
We know that is a simple idea and a simple application, but we have limited resources while staying at home and we've tried to do the best as we could while managing time with our classes, tasks and tests. Our idea was mainly to make students aware on how they are being careless while walking on the streets and thinking that nothing will happen or that the car will stop if necessary.
When we return to school after the COVID-19 situation is better and we can be close to each other once again, we intend to talk with the students about traffic accidents, how to behave while walking on the streets and how to keep others safe.
