Road safety begins at school

JAKARTA: Hundreds of elementary school children took part in a corporate-sponsored program to campaign on road safety held by the traffic division of the Jakarta Police on Thursday.

The event drew 400 students from 25 elementary schools around Jakarta, who participated in cycling, drawing, reading poetry and reciting stories centered around the theme of road safety.

The head of the city police’s traffic division, Adj. Sr. Comr. Kanton Pinem, said the program would not only raise children’s awareness of road safety, but also build better relations with the police.

Pinem said the campaign was crucial to reducing the number of road accidents given the fact that human errors contributed to 90 percent of all accidents.

In the first six months of this year, police recorded a total of 4,129 traffic accidents in Jakarta. The students taking part in the program were part of the 1,035 students taking part in a road safety campaign sponsored by oil company Shell. — JP