Boosting road safety among the youth

With three children under the age of 15 dying on South African roads every day, transport logistics and supply-chain specialist Cargo Carriers has partnered with Active Education, which provides unique Scholar Road Safety Education to public schools on behalf of the Department of Basic Education.

Cargo Carriers recently supplied more than 5 000 reflective sashes to Active Education for its training programme. Students will wear these “walking seatbelts” every day as official components of their school uniforms to significantly improve their visibility on the roads.

They will be introduced to students at six schools in Lichtenburg, five in Vanderbijlpark and five in Sasolburg as part of the ongoing rollout of this unique training programme that is designed to instil a culture of road safety in young minds.

Active Education has already reached more than a million South African children, and its programme has been acknowledged by the Department of Basic Education as being one of the most effective in South Africa.

It adopts a fun and engaging approach to communicating a very serious topic to children. Learners are introduced to the department’s ten basic principles for road safety, which is aligned to the national school syllabus.

This leg of the programme is also receiving additional support from the Cargo Carriers subsidiary, Ezethu Logistics, as well as the company’s joint venture partners, Uzuko Carriers (East London) and Sitanani Carriers (Mpumalanga).

Cargo Carriers is a prominent operator in the Lichtenburg, Vanderbijlpark and Sasolburg areas, and this programme will bolster its own initiatives geared at raising safety levels there and elsewhere on the South Africanj road network.