The National Road Safety Foundation recently awarded Watch for Me CT a $25,000 grant to reduce traffic accidents involving pedestrians and bicyclists.
Watch for Me CT is a partnership between the Connecticut Department of Transportation’s Highway Safety Office and the Connecticut Children’s Injury Prevention Center.
The organization will use the grant to develop a program to recruit and train youth to teach bicycle and pedestrian safety to their peers. The program will be within the Yard Goats Young Ambassadors Program, an afterschool initiative run by the Hartford Yard Goats, a minor league baseball team.
“Whether walking, bicycling, or scooting, youth are at an increased risk when they share the road with drivers,” Amy Watkins, Watch for Me CT program specialist, said. “This grant affords us the opportunity to educate our young residents – especially youth in urban communities and communities with low incomes, which have historically been overlooked – about pedestrian and bicycle safety and reduce crashes and fatalities on our roads and highways.”
Annually, an estimated 1,500 pedestrians and 550 bicyclists are hit by drivers in Connecticut. Nationally, half of cyclist and nearly one-third of pedestrian fatalities involve children under the age of 15, according to an NYU Langone School of Medicine study, which analyzed National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics.