Carlin Carr, Mumbai Community Manager
Mumbai’s streets are a scary battleground. Rickshaws nudge ahead of beastly city buses; cows wander aimlessly through jams of oversized cars; and pedestrians push across busy intersections in droves, hoping the power in numbers will help them reach the other side safely. Everyone is vulnerable in this situation, but no one more than the thousands of school children who walk to school, often in the streets, in the absence of school buses and navigable sidewalks.
In a city starved of open spaces for play, walking to school is a potentially healthy activity. Moreover, studies have proven that this healthy bit of exercise en route to the classroom actually benefits students academically. Students have shown better concentration after walking or biking to school. In Mumbai, walking is risky, but many school children have no other choice.
An article in the Indian Express highlights the dangers faced by pedestrian children at home and abroad. “Accidents kill a million children annually. In India, this number is around 60,000. Several others suffer permanent injuries in road accidents,” cites the article. Just ask the kids from a shelter for street children in a ritzy area of Mumbai. They have scars on their faces to prove the dangers on their walk to school. The busy road is nearly absent of sidewalks, and when there are strips, they are overtaken by knotted tree trunks, bus stops or small shops. In the monsoon, the situation is worse. Kids have been mowed down by speeding motorbikes and oncoming traffic.
Unlike their counterparts at Mumbai’s private schools who are shuttled back and forth to school in personal vehicles, municipal school children have few options but to walk. The situation is not unique to Mumbai, nor to the developing world. In Ohio, in the United States, dangers en route to school can be drawn along socio-economic lines as well. “African-American children and those from lower-income families are far more likely to be hit by cars than white children in the suburbs … and the reason is simple: The state has created inequality in transportation to school,” says an article in The Atlantic Cities. “But to compound the problem, the state is counting on parents to subsidize their kids’ safe travel by chauffeuring their children in a private vehicle. As for the urban children whose families are too poor to own cars or who can’t drive them to school for other reasons? Well, they just have to take their chances on streets designed to move ever more vehicles ever faster, and where cities like Akron are removing traffic lights for the convenience of drivers.” The situation in Akron is not too far off from Mumbai’s increasingly car-focused transport initiatives.
Mumbai’s Walking Project has been advocating for better sidewalks in the city; in addition, a new initiative, Safe Kids Foundation, works to prevent accidents to children in India. The Safe Kids Foundation teaches safe behaviors to pedestrian children and to motorists in the city through educational materials and hands-on activities. As part of the “Walk This Way” project that Safe Kids Foundation launched in Mumbai with support from FedEx, organizers and kids from local municipal schools painted an 80-foot-long school wall with creative messages illustrating proper road safety. Safe Kids Foundation is India’s first organization dedicated to protecting youth from injury.
“Children in India are particularly vulnerable to injuries in traffic because almost all children walk as their primary means of transportation,” said Mahendra Mehta, the Founder and Trustee of Safe Kids Foundation. “As the number of vehicles on the roads continues to increase, an increase in traffic-related fatalities is expected. But programs like Safe Kids Walk This Way can help protect our children, prevent injuries, and save lives.”
The Safe Kids Foundation is a start, and certainly important for children to learn how to properly negotiate the streets. However, safe access to school should be a national priority. If proper sidewalks are not in place, then every school child should be safely shuttled to school on a bus. The walk to school should be a healthy activity, not a death-defying experience.
Photo credit: SusanSprach