Generating awareness on road safety in children

Lifestyle Tuesday 28/November/2017 19:18 PM
By: Times News Service
Generating awareness on road safety in children

Pictures depicting motorists skipping red lights and people helping elderly folks cross the street might make you think that these may be the work of an adult. However, these insightful drawings were made by children under 12 years of age and they had done so for a series of drawing competitions that were held in seven locations across Oman by Hyundai – OTE Group.
The traffic safety awareness drawing competition for children under the theme ‘Safer Roads, Happier Families’ came to a close in Barka recently.
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In all about 1,500 school children participated in the competitions. The month long drive began in Muscat and was conducted in seven locations, including Seeb, Ibra, Mabela, Nizwa, and Sohar. The programme was aimed at educating future drivers with the importance of traffic safety. The event targeted children under 12 years of age.
These events were organised by OTE group, which represents Hyundai in Oman. This was a part of the Hyundai - OTE Group’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative to create awareness amongst children.
The schoolchildren were invited to Hyundai showrooms and gave them drawing sheets and colour pencils to draw pictures on the topic of road safety. To encourage and motivate the children, 10 winners were selected at each of the 7 locations and the first prize got a 55 inch TV while second and third prizes received television sets of 43 inches and 32 inches respectively. Seven consolation prize winners got watches.
The children were also given reading material on traffic safety. To be able to learn road safety in a fun manner, children were treated with magic shows and light refreshments and T-shirts with the image of seat belt were also given away during the events. Also, special movie shows were also organised in Muscat and Sohar, where the children were a shown a short video on traffic safety tips before the main movie.
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The drawing competition events were also attended by Royal Oman Police personnel (ROP), where they educated children about importance of traffic safety, traffic signs and the like.
Initiatives of this kind by corporate bodies can go a long way in helping reach various government bodies’ efforts aiming at reducing road traffic accidents in the country to the future drivers and also aid in creating a generation of safe drivers by instilling a culture of traffic safety at a young age.
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