Helsinki invests EUR five million in improving safety of school journeys

New school year begins

print this

Since the end of the last decade, the City of Helsinki has invested EUR five million in the improvement of the safety of the trip to and from school for school-age road users. Special attention has been paid to the construction of raised pedestrian crossings and speed bumps as well as to lower local speed limits, which are all supposed to cause motorists to reduce their speed in the vicinity of schools. Further improvements include new traffic lights and signs.
      "The aim of these actions is to prevent road traffic deaths and injuries involving schoolchildren by improving the safety of school journeys", concludes Pirjo Koivunen of Helsinki's City Planning Department.
     
In the course of the current decade, a total of 80 schoolchildren have been injured on their way to and from school in Helsinki alone. On the other hand, the situation has kept improving and the trend has constantly been downward. Koivunen believes that the attempts to improve the traffic environment have been effective.
      Today - on Tuesday - over 46,000 schoolchildren start school in Helsinki. Some 4,800 of them are seven-year-old first-graders.
      Furthermore, over 100,000 children in the entire Greater Helsinki Area have their first day of school today. Almost 8,000 of them are first-graders.
     
According to the police, as many as 37 primary schools across Helsinki - more than 25 percent of the total - are located in areas with a high risk of accidents. Today when the school year is getting under way, the police have increased traffic surveillance in the vicinity of these schools.
     
Moreover, a total of EUR 1.2 million has been spent to improve the traffic environment surrounding some of the most problematic schools since 2000, Koivunen reports. The improvements have been made in order of urgency. However, the actions have not calmed down the situation entirely.
     
Almost 70 percent of all accidents in the course of a school day occur at pedestrian crossings. In the neighbourhood of the primary schools listed between 2003 and 2005, traffic safety was improved in seven places by constructing raised pedestrian crossings and speed bumps. In the district of Munkkivuori alone, two pedestrian crossings were raised in 2003, following the death of a nine-year-old girl who was hit by a car at a light-operated pedestrian crossing on Huopalahdentie in 2002.
      In addition to the more than EUR one million that has been used to improve matters around the listed primary schools, another EUR four million has been used to bolster the traffic safety of other schools in Helsinki since the end of the last decade.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Danger lurks at pedestrian crossings - children at risk in Helsinki (16.8.2005)
  Schoolchildren at risk even at traffic light-controlled crossings (17.8.2005)

Helsingin Sanomat