Jeju Police Hold Contest for Creating Children's Traffic Safety Guide

[Jeju=Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Hwang Jeongpil] Jeju Police Agency (Chief Kang Hwangsoo) announced on the 28th that it will hold a “Traffic Safety Map Making” contest for elementary school students in the province from the 1st to the 31st of next month, titled “The Safe Route to and from School We Make.”

This contest invites elementary school students to create traffic safety maps by identifying traffic safety hazards along their own routes to and from school from the perspective of children rather than adults.

Additionally, the police and related organizations will conduct joint on-site inspections of the hazards discovered by the children to improve facilities and the traffic environment. They will also collaborate with cooperative groups such as the Green Mothers’ Association and Model Drivers’ Association to reflect these findings in traffic guidance activities, aiming to create safer routes to and from school.

Jeju Police will select nine outstanding works through a fair evaluation of the submissions received in this contest and award the Jeju Police Chief’s certificate and prizes.

To prevent child traffic accidents within school zones (Children Protection Zones), facility improvements, on-site crackdowns, and various systems and policies are also being promoted.

However, violations such as traffic accidents and speeding within Children Protection Zones continue unabated.

Nationwide, child traffic accidents in Children Protection Zones increased by 1.8% compared to the same period last year, but in Jeju, they decreased by 50% compared to the previous year.

Over the past five years, the locations in Jeju with the highest number of child traffic accidents within Children Protection Zones are Wolrang Elementary School (6 cases), Samhwa Elementary School and Halla Elementary School (4 cases each), followed by Hagwi Elementary School and Donghong Elementary School (3 cases each).

Speeding enforcement within Children Protection Zones has increased about sixfold compared to 2017 and nearly doubled every year, indicating that the risk of accidents due to speeding in these zones remains high.

In the past five years, the Children Protection Zones in Jeju with the highest number of speeding violations are Oedo Elementary School (12,329 cases), Seogwipo Saemteo Daycare Center (12,137 cases), Handong Elementary School (11,299 cases), and (Kimnyeong Elementary School) Dongbok Branch School (9,785 cases).

Additionally, speeding violations are frequent in the Children Protection Zones of Changcheon Elementary School, Hado Elementary School, and Bukchon Elementary School.

This contest is expected to be a meaningful opportunity to raise awareness of traffic safety by encouraging children, parents, and school officials to directly participate in creating safe routes to and from school, and to remind drivers to be vigilant about safe driving on these routes.

A police official said, “We ask many students, parents, and school officials to participate in this traffic safety map-making contest to create safer and more enjoyable routes to and from school for children,” adding, “We urge drivers to remember that Children Protection Zones are absolute traffic safety zones and that children are like moving red traffic lights, and to drive safely.”

He continued, “Going forward, we will provide community-based ‘prevention-first’ policing services tailored to the public’s perspective, the direct beneficiaries of security services, rather than one-sided ‘after-the-fact’ measures from the police’s viewpoint.”

Jeju=Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Hwang Jeongpil panax33@asiae.co.kr

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