The Governors Highway Safety Association recently awarded $75,000 in grants to Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania’s State Highway Safety Offices to work with community-based groups to promote safe youth mobility options.
Funding is from the National Road Safety Foundation.
In the United States, traffic crashes are one of the leading causes of death for children, and nearly 33 percent of pedestrian and 50 percent of cyclist fatalities were children younger than 15, according to an NYU Langone School of Medicine study.
Watch for Me CT, a partnership between the Connecticut Department of Transportation’s Highway Safety Office and the Connecticut Children’s Injury Prevention Center. The program will recruit and train youth to teach bicycle and pedestrian safety to their peers.
The New York City Department of Transportation and the Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee. The agencies will conduct multilingual education and outreach in the Bronx by recruiting and training teens to serve as peer-to-peer instructors promoting safety on scooters, skateboards, and other micromobility devices.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Safety Operations in partnership with United Way of Erie County. The Safer Walking Routes to School initiative at Iroquois Elementary School will emphasize engaging youth in educating their peers about pedestrian safety.