News Dubai

Back to school: Focus on road safety
By our staff reporters
1 September 2007

DUBAI & SHARJAH — With schools in the country reopening this week, parents seem to be primarily concerned about road safety for their children. Especially because several accidents involving school children were reported during the previous academic year.

Khalid Yasser Ali, a 10-year-old student of Ibn Khaldoon Private School in Sharjah, died after being crushed by a car in May this year while he was waiting for his father near the school gate.

In May again, 11-year-old Mohammed Ali of Al Shoula Private School in Sharjah received serious injuries when he was hit by a speeding car while he was trying to cross the street.

Eleven-year-old Rawnaa Mahmoud Hussein, a Grade VI student in an Umm Al Quwain school, had a brush with death when she was run over by a Land Cruiser early this year. She was about to board her school bus.

No parking facilities
Parents complain about lack of proper parking facilities, and safety measures on school buses even as authorities have announced a raft of measures to control traffic near educational institutes. They say road safety measures for students have remained as chaotic as ever in schools that are mostly located on busy roads.

Suzie Kainer’s daughters, aged six and seven, are students of Horizon School in Jumeirah. She says cars are often parked on the kerb around the school forcing students to use the road.

Apart from the poor parking situation in the school, she says, there are no pedestrian crossings in the area and nobody seems to control the traffic and facilitate students’ safety.

“I always hold my daughters’ hands while crossing the road. But they’re children - they can rush on to the road!” she says. “That is a real concern for me.”

There are only two raised wide-speed bumps in the area and Kainer is not convinced that they are enough to make a speeding car slow down.

Vanessa Kairncross’s three-year-old daughter attends The Palms Nursery located on a slip road between Al Wasl Road and Shaikh Zayed Road. While there is a car park a block away from the nursery, most parents park along the kerb to avoid the walk with small children in tow.

“This should stop,” she says. “There should also be parking attendants so that someone could monitor cars and children.”

The nursery is only a few steps away from the heavy traffic on a fast-moving highway. “They need to control the speed along the road,” feels Kairncross. “There should be lots of speed bumps and cameras.”

Traffic controller
Her six-year-old son studies at Jumeirah Primary School. She says the situation is better in the school with teachers being assigned to monitor traffic along with a traffic controller to help students.

Susie Dautel’s seven-year-old daughter Gia and five-year-old son Spencer attend Jumeirah English Speaking School. “We’re lucky we have three security controllers at each of the zebra crossings,” she says, adding that school bus drivers are often an impatient lot.

Dautel feels that people’s awareness level about how to drive around schools needs to be raised and students should be educated in schools about road safety.

“We always had older children to help all the little ones how to cross the roads,” she adds.

Schools are apparently introducing new safety measures this academic year that include training drivers, educating staff members about road safety for students and issuing guidelines for parents.

For instance, Far Eastern Private School in Sharjah is sparing no effort to ensure students’ safety this year. A seven-and-a-half-year-old student of the school, Shaniila Anita, was run over and killed by a car in the school’s parking lot last year.

“We are well prepared this academic year. Last year’s tragedy should not happen again. We have given proper training to our school bus drivers,” says Ericson, a teacher in the school.

More security guards
There will be more security guards at the school gate to monitor buses. Each of the school buses will henceforth have two attendants who will keep an eye on students so that they don’t get off the bus unnecessarily once they have boarded the vehicles, according to Ericson.

“Once the school bell rings, teachers will make sure that students board the bus in an orderly manner,” he adds.

The head of Delhi Private School (DPS), Sharjah emphasises that safety of students is their top priority. “We should make our school safe for our children,” says DPS Principal Abha Sahgal.

“Parents send their children to us because they have a lot of confidence and trust in us. We have held regular workshops to educate our drivers about road safety. No student leaves the school without being escorted by attendants and private cars cannot enter the premises.”

Safety belts
The Winchester School in Dubai has also taken several precautionary measures. The school buses have safety belts for all children and drivers and conductors have been trained to handle emergencies.

“We are planning to install a software to track the movement of each of our buses. Besides, we can record and monitor our buses to check whether they are stopping at designated spots,” says Principal Raminder Vig.