Safety Guidelines for School Children

School children are a special group of road users who are vulnerable due to their mental immaturity. As a driver often you may have to carry school children in your vehicle or have to interact with them on the road. Being a responsible driver, it is your duty to check for the presence of school children on the road. You should be more careful near school zones. Safe road use habit for school children and safe vehicle use for drivers near school area are discussed below.

• You should slow down while driving in a school zone. Normally posted speed limits are mention near schools. Even in the absence of a sign, you should slow down your vehicle.
• When school children are crossing, you should always yield or give way to school children.
• When a school bus is stopped for pick-up or drop-off, you must not overtake the school bus. You should come to a complete stop and wait for the school bus to start.
• School children should always walk on the footpath. In the absence of footpath, they should use the extreme right-hand side of the roads facing oncoming traffic.
• School children must follow traffic signals while crossing the road. It is also important for them to use crossing facilities such as zebra crossing, pedestrian underpass, foot over bridge, etc. The image below shows both right and wrong ways of crossing the road.
  
  Figure: School children safely on road.
  
  Figure: School children crossing the road in an unsafe manner
• School children should always cross the road in front of their stopped school bus and look for traffic coming from behind. It is very important that they cross under the supervision of an adult person as shown above.
• School children should not run or rush into the road.
• School children should never cross a road at a corner or curve in the absence of signal or proper crossing facilities. Curves or corners are considered as hazardous locations because of poor visibility and inadequate sight distance.