Vietnam - August 28, 2019

AIP Foundation partnered with the George Institute for Global Health UK and the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP), with support from Fondation Botnar, to discuss the results of the Slow Zones, Safe Zones program in Vietnam on Injury Prevention Journal’s blog.

In 2017, Fondation Botnar launched the Child Road Safety Challenge (“The Challenge”) acknowledging the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 which states that every child should be afforded protection, every child has the inherent right to life.

Slow Zones, Safe Zones is a two year project that was implemented in April 2018 and focuses on speed reduction and school zone safety in Pleiku City, Vietnam, in collaboration with the local government and paint company KOVA. A consortium of public, private, and civil society partners each play important roles in the delivery of the program.

There are 33 primary schools with approximately 25,000 students in Pleiku. Two pilot schools (Phan Dang Luu school and Nguyen Luong Bang school) were selected to receive the full intervention. Teachers and students from a further 31 primary schools were also engaged through workshops and the distribution of road safety education materials.

An assessment of the infrastructural risks to road users using the Star Rating for Schools (SR4S) app was also undertaken at the schools. The SR4S app is the first systematic, evidence-based approach for analyzing road safety risks in school zones. The SR4S app rated Phan Dang Luu school a “two star” school and Nguyen Luong Bang school a “three star” school (one star being the least safe and five stars being the safest).

Furthermore, program results showed that 6% of respondents correctly identified the current speed limit and 100% of observed vehicles were traveling over 30km/h. AIP Foundation successfully utilized program results to advocate to the local government in Pleiku to lower the speed limits around the two pilot schools. The blog also features school zone modifications and PSA campaigns conducted by AIP Foundation in support of the Slow Zones, Safe Zones program.

Injury Prevention is the official journal of the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research (SAVIR) and is an international peer reviewed journal that covers science, policy, and public health practices to reduce the burden of injury in all age groups around the world.