Safe Traffic Netherlands (VVN) will start again on Monday with the annual road safety campaign following the end of the summer holidays. Minister Mark Harbers (Infrastructure and Water Management) will give the starting signal at a primary school in Rotterdam. With the campaign, VVN hopes to reduce the accident peak among cycling students that traditionally occurs after the summer holidays.
All over the country banners and posters will be hanging on the streets in the near future with the slogan ‘Our schools have started again’. This reminds road users that students are back on the road. Motorists are urged to watch their speed at schools. New this year is the so-called Schoolyard Challenge of VVN, which asks all groups in primary schools to apply or express the slogan on their schoolyard in the most original way possible.
VVN calls on parents to often practice the bicycle route to school with their children, so that they gain more traffic experience. VVN refers to figures from the Road Safety Research Foundation (SWOV), which show that last year 6,700 children aged eight to fourteen ended up in the emergency department after a bicycle accident. Of those bicycle accidents, 23 percent took place in the months of August and September.
Check bikes
In addition to the fact that parents should practice the route with their child, they should also check the bicycle for defects. VVN asks motorists to avoid school zones if possible and otherwise, “if that is really not possible”, to drive at an appropriate speed.
Primary and secondary schools in the center of the country will start again on Monday, after six weeks off. The central region includes all of South Holland, large parts of Gelderland and Utrecht and parts of Flevoland and North Brabant. In a week the new school year will start in the north. The children in the south are the last to start, at the beginning of September.