Presented by Dr. Gillian Hotz, Associate Research Professor, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and Director of WalkSafe™ & BikeSafe™ Programs; Christine Stinson, WalkSafe™ Project Coordinator; Linda Crabill Byrne, San Jose, CA, Traffic Safety Education Manager; and David Parisi, PE, TE, Parisi Associates Transportation Consulting.

To register, please visit https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/398802082.

Education is an important component of a comprehensive pedestrian program. Pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists alike can benefit from educational tools and messages that teach them the rules, rights and responsibilities of various modes of travel. This Webinar will highlight two successful pedestrian safety education programs and the lessons practitioners can take from them.

Dr. Gillian Hotz will be joined by Christine Stinson to provide an overview of the implementation of the WalkSafe™ program in Miami-Dade County, a high-risk urban center with a multi-ethnic and culturally diverse population. The presentation will highlight unique strategies for maximizing the reach of the program’s educational component, coupling pedestrian safety and physical activity efforts, and overcoming barriers in such an environment.

David Parisi and Linda Crabill Byrne will then discuss Street Smarts, a nationally-recognized program that combines social marketing and a media campaign to teach basic traffic safety focused, among other things, on pedestrian behavior and safety.  Ms. Byrne will cover the evolution of the program. Mr. Parisi will discuss how the program is being used in Marin County, CA, to target behaviors, deliver key messages, and evaluate results.

PBIC offers these free, public Webinars every other month. To register for upcoming Webinars and to access archived presentations, please visit www.walkinginfo.org/webinars.

Content from the PBIC Livable Communities Webinar series is drawn from the PBIC’s in-person trainings focused on pedestrian safety and creating livable communities. The trainings provide in-depth technical assistance, allow hands-on work with the experts, and generate detailed action plans. Complete information on these trainings can be found on the PBIC training Web site at www.walkinginfo.org/training.

“Communities across the country are finding new ways to make it safer for children to walk and bicycle to school,” says Lauren Marchetti, director of the National Center for Safe Routes to School. “These mini-grants encourage communities to get students involved in the effort to foster a culture of walking and bicycling in their own neighborhoods and schools.”

The National Center’s SRTS mini-grant program, now in its second award cycle, supports creative ideas that support safe walking and/or bicycling to school and are youth-focused. Successful applications will focus on either increasing safe walking and/or bicycling to school or improving the safety of students already walking and/or bicycling to school. Activities may also explore a variety of issues related to SRTS, including physical activity and environmental benefits, distracted driving, personal safety, integrating children with disabilities and community building. Mini-grant activities with high levels of age-appropriate student engagement are encouraged.

Mini-grant applications are available now at www.saferoutesinfo.org/minigrants. Applications are due Wed., April 7, 2010, and recipients will be announced by Wed., May 26, 2010.

About the National Center for Safe Routes to School
Since its creation in 2006, the National Center for Safe Routes to School has assisted communities in enabling and encouraging children to safely walk and bicycle to school. The National Center offers training and resources to assist communities in successful SRTS program development, and funding the mini-grants extends that mission.

The National Center is maintained by the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center with funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. For additional information about the National Center for Safe Routes to School, go to www.saferoutesinfo.org.

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Media contact: Caroline Dickson, dickson(at)hsrc.unc.edu or (919) 962-5835
Mini-grant contact: info(at)saferoutesinfo.org

“This report provides a snapshot of student travel and parent attitudes about the trip to and from school among elementary and middle schools included in the study,” said Lauren Marchetti, director of the National Center for Safe Routes to School. “As schools and communities begin or continue building safe walking and bicycling initiatives, these baseline results can potentially provide a benchmark for local SRTS programs.”

KEY FINDINGS OF ANALYSIS INCLUDE:

• Distance to school is strongly associated with how children get to and from school. The proportion of children walking or bicycling to school is much greater among those who live closer to school.
• Across all grades, the family car and school bus were the two most frequently used options for travel to/from school. Walking was third. However, there are notable differences between how students in lower grades (K-5th) and higher grades (6th-8th) travel to school.
• Safety factors, like traffic speed and volume and street crossing safety, were frequently selected as barriers by parents who live within one half mile of school but do not allow their children to walk or bicycle to/from school.

The baseline results provide useful information about student travel for the schools in the sample, many of which likely just began their SRTS activities, and highlight issues for the national SRTS program to address and promote. Over 130,000 parent responses and almost 2.4 million student trips to or from elementary and middle schools were included in the aggregate analysis. In order to examine information most likely to reflect the starting point for schools before or soon after their SRTS activities began, the analysis only includes each school’s first submission of data.

Click here to download the full report.

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For more information, please contact Caroline Dickson at The National Center for Safe Routes to School by emailing dickson(at)hsrc.unc.edu or calling 919-962-5835.

The video is intended to air on Ridgewood’s public access television channel, on closed circuit televisions at the high school, and in the driver education classes. The video has also been posted on YouTube for all to see.

As a result of these shocking statistics, Traficon,  a company in Belgium, is focusing on vulnerable road users in terms of urban design, traffic management and automotive safety with a video detection solution designed to buck this worrying trend.  Click here to read more.

Click here to read the entire article.