Safe and visible
Bodenmais, September 9, 2024 - The summer vacations are over and many first graders are starting a new, exciting chapter in their lives. To ensure that the first graders get to school and back home safely
Bodenmais distributes safety vests to the newcomers at the start of school.
The days are getting shorter again and poor visibility makes the journey to school in the fall and winter a not entirely safe undertaking - especially for the youngest road users, the Abc pupils. The Bodenmais market has therefore equipped its first graders with high-visibility vests. “First-graders are not traffic professionals - neither their ability to react nor their ability to hear directions are as well developed as those of adults, which means they are often unable to correctly assess critical situations. That's why their best protection is to be seen,” says Mayor Michael Adam.
Simone Reinhardt, Managing Director of the Zweckverband Kommunale Verkehrssicherheit Oberpfalz (Upper Palatinate Municipal Road Safety Association), has some figures on this: “With dark clothing, children are no longer visible to drivers after just 25 meters. With light-colored clothing, on the other hand, young road users are visible up to 40 meters, and with reflective clothing even up to 150 meters.” This means that conspicuous high-visibility vests, reflectors or even flashing clip-on lights increase the visibility of the youngest children and thus reduce the risk of accidents. To ensure that schoolchildren reach their destination safely, Adam also calls on all other road users to pay more attention on the roads: “More than half of accidents on the way to school occur in the dark season between October and March. That's why I'm particularly appealing to drivers to drive slowly and with foresight.”
