Gwangju City Challenges Zero Child Traffic Accident Deaths for 3 Consecutive Years

Gwangju City Hall

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Gwangju Metropolitan City announced on the 5th that it will challenge itself to achieve zero child traffic accident fatalities for three consecutive years.

In the Gwangju area, six child traffic accident fatalities occurred in 2017, but there were no fatalities in 2018 and 2019.

Accordingly, Gwangju City has decided to promote various projects to achieve zero child traffic accident fatalities for three consecutive years through this year.

First, the city will expand the “Installation of Standard Model Yellow Traffic Lights in School Zones” project, which was selected as an excellent case by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.

This project involves painting traffic light poles around school zones yellow to encourage drivers to drive cautiously by installing yellow traffic lights, installing raised crosswalks to induce vehicle deceleration, and installing luminous signs and pedestrian fences to improve nighttime visibility.

Gwangju City installed the standard model yellow traffic lights in child protection zones near 87 elementary schools by last year, and will add installations near 70 more schools this year, expanding to a total of 157 elementary schools.

Additionally, the city will expand the installation of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, which have been promoted to crack down on vehicles causing child traffic accident risk factors such as speeding or illegal parking around elementary schools.

Gwangju City installed 157 CCTV cameras by last year and will add 96 more by 2022 at 157 elementary schools, operating a total of 253 cameras.

Along with this, illegal parking enforcement will be strongly carried out in cooperation with the relevant autonomous districts.

The traffic safety guardian project for elementary school commuting routes, conducted last year, will also continue. This project supports the commuting of first and second graders with similar school routes, and this year about 100 guardians will be active at around 30 elementary schools.

The child traffic park traffic safety experience education will also be revitalized. Considering that the child traffic park is a traffic safety experience space for kindergartners and elementary students with about 18,000 visitors annually and is very popular, a mini train was replaced last year, and this year the station will be remodeled to be used as an educational space for children.

Park Gap-su, head of the city’s Traffic Policy Division, said, “It is the duty of adults to support children, the future owners, to safely commute to school, so we will do our best to ensure that child traffic accident fatalities no longer occur by promoting child traffic safety projects that consider the actual movement routes of children.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.