BEIJING, April 26 -- FedEx Express, the world’s largest express transportation company, today joined hands with China Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Safe Kids China in hosting a Childhood Road Safety Seminar to promote child road safety education in China. The seminar is conducted amid the United Nations Global Road Safety Week, which is taking place from April 23 to 29s, focusing on raising the issue of road traffic injuries to a higher level across the world.
According to The World Road Traffic Injury Prevention Report issued by World Health Organization in 2004, road accident has become the second largest killer of children. In China, an average of over 35,000 children aged 15 and below are injured or killed in traffic accidents every year. Among these, nearly 16,000 child pedestrians are injured while crossing the road.
At today’s seminar, co-organized by CDC, Safe Kids China and FedEx at Wangjing Dongyuan Primary School in Beijing, CDC released a new study focusing on child road safety in three major Chinese cities. The study shows that among the 3763 children surveyed in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou from 2000 to 2004, nearly half of the injured children were aged between 5 and 9. And more than 90% of the accidents occurred on the straight and level roads, most of which are caused by careless road crossing or violations of traffic rules.
“The results of the study indicate that most road accidents involving children are preventable,” said Wu Fan, Director of the Center for Chronic and Non-Communicable Disease Control and Prevention under CDC. “In order to prevent these accidents, we have to continue to step up our efforts in education.”
“The study shows that we still have a long way to go to raise the awareness of child road safety in China. It is important to promote the education of children pedestrian safety,” said Eddy Chan, Senior Vice President, FedEx China. “As a good corporate citizen, FedEx will continue our partnership with government and non-profit partners to design more interesting programs to teach children pedestrian safety knowledge through various channels and to increase their awareness of self protection.”
“We can save more lives and reduce the number of road-related injuries by teaching our children simple facts about road safety and improving the environment of the road safety,” added Monica Cui, Director of Safe Kids China.
Following the seminar, attendees and FedEx volunteers led the students from the school to walk on the street and taught pedestrian safety knowledge to them.
FedEx has worked closely with Safe Kids Worldwide over the past years to promote safety awareness for children all over the world. Since the company began its partnership with Safe Kids China in April 2004, it has sponsored safety education for more than a million students through in-school programs throughout the country. More than 400 FedEx employees have devoted their time to working together with teachers to educate students about road safety through interesting games