It’s still Distracted Driving Awareness month and DENSO is offering a safety toolkit for parents, children, pedestrians, cyclists and more.
Road traffic crashes account for approximately 1.25 million fatalities every year, and about 500 child fatalities every day. To help reduce auto crashes where DENSO’s more than 23,000 North American employees live and work, the global automotive supplier, together with Safe Kids Worldwide, co-created a comprehensive roadmap encouraging employees to spread safe driving habits: the Road Safety Associate Toolkit.
The 41-page document offers safety tips, infographics, activity sheets, and other materials to assist employees in making their communities safer for kids. The Toolkit has three sections: In and Around Cars, Pedestrian Safety, and Bike Safety.
The Toolkit Notes
- 1 in 4 high school students crosses the street while distracted.
- Crossing someplace other than an intersection accounts for more than 70% of child pedestrian deaths.
- 3/4 of teen pedestrian deaths occur between 7 p.m. and 7a.m., when it’s dark out.
- Every day more than 40 kids in the U.S. are hit by a car while walking.
- Between 2014 to 2016 the rate of child pedestrian deaths increased by 19 percent.
- Eighty percent of child pedestrian deaths occur at non-intersection locations.
- Teens have a death rate twice that of younger children and have accounted for half of all child pedestrian injuries in the past five years.
“Developing new technologies will help us deliver safer vehicles, but to truly create a world free of traffic accidents, we need to nurture safe driving habits and safety discussions at the community level. We can’t achieve that without our employees raising awareness for child safety in their own communities,” said Robert Townsend, vice president, Community Affairs at DENSO. “The Toolkit we developed with Safe Kids provides ample resources for easy and actionable steps to become a local road safety advocate.”
The Toolkit includes tips on installing car seats and avoiding heatstroke, advice for parents on talking to teen drivers, ways to prevent kids from being distracted while walking near roadways, and Halloween safety precautions. It also provides contact information for local Safe Kid coalitions, an action plan to make school zones safer, other online resources, and social media posts.
“Safe Kids Worldwide has been laser focused on preventing childhood injuries for almost 30 years, and we’ve made a lot of progress toward keeping kids safe,” said Torine Creppy, president of Safe Kids Worldwide. “But we can do even more by partnering with the associates of DENSO. We’re confident that our joint initiative can help to reduce the number of traffic crashes and protect our children.”