‘The Extended Classroom’ – Children Road Safety Partnership between STS and RoadSafetyUAE

• Road traffic accidents #1 cause of death for children below 14
• Education sector’s vital need to teach road safety
• School buses are ‘The Extended Classroom’ for real-life learning

Dubai, 1st March 2017: STS, the UAE’s biggest private school bus operator enters a strategic partnership with RoadSafetyUAE. According to official data, road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for children below the age of 14 years in the UAE. Currently, there is no mandatory road safety content in UAE’s school curricula. Young drivers account for a big share of traffic accidents (for example in Abu Dhabi 63% of all accidents).

Colonel Augustine, Managing Director of STS states: “All parts of the education sector are challenged to educate and to protect our children, and we at STS are aware of our responsibility. We must make sure, that children know all the basics of road safety in order to protect themselves and to share their knowledge with their friends, siblings and families. Educated children will become responsible young drivers once they will get behind the wheel. STS as the biggest private school bus operator in the UAE with more than 2,000 buses, transporting about 70,000+ students every day can play a strategic role in educating school children in a real-life environment.”

The partnership between STS and RoadSafetyUAE will consist of various engagement initiatives aimed at children and parents at events, campaigns and on-line activities, like an on-line pledge for children and parents to always wear their seat belt. In addition, there will be a strong content collaboration between the parties for the recently launched STS magazine “Our Journey“.

Thomas Edelmann, Managing Director of RoadSafetyUAE: “Collaborating with STS means, that we have the chance to expose kids to road safety while they are in and around school buses, hence we speak about the ‘extended classroom’. STS drivers and school bus attendants are experts in road safety and they can engage with kids on a daily basis about proper and safe behavior. STS offers leading safety technology in its fleet and has a great safety track record, so they are a perfect partner for us.”

Children must learn how to safely wait for and enter the school bus. They must learn the importance of buckling up themselves or be buckled up in the school bus. Children must be made aware of the proper behavior while being driven in school buses and how to safely disembark and approach their waiting parents or guardians, and how to safely cross roads on their way home after their school bus ride. We must make it clear to our children, that school bus drivers and attendants are persons of authority and that their directions must be obeyed, in the same manner as the guidance of regular teachers is obeyed. Besides school bus staff, the teacher body as well as the parents must make it crystal clear to students, that they must behave properly in school buses and that they must follow the rules given to them by schools, school bus operators and school bus personnel.

The partnership aims to go beyond the expected, by providing students the opportunity for ‘good citizen’ contributions, for academic projects with regards to sustainability and emission reductions and for arts and crafts competitions.

STS becomes the patron of the topic ‘Safety around schools and school buses’ on RoadSafetyUAE’s on-line portal www.roadsafetyuae.com.