Abstract

Over the past ten years, road accidents have resulted in the death of over 1,000 Thai youths per year and this looks set to continue. In 2015, the Thai government plans to introduce a road safety campaign specifically aimed at educating children. This campaign is to be overseen by the Ministry of Education and key stakeholders on road safety. To understand the current situation of traffic safety education in Bangkok schools, ThaiRoads Foundation in collaboration with the Department of Education, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) conducted a mail out survey at 437 schools in the Bangkok Metropolitan area. With the data from 429 schools responding to the questionnaire, we found that in 2016 school children from kindergarten to primary education (Prathom 6) spent on average 40 min per year in classroom and 43 min outside of classroom per year on road safety education. The survey questions were also extended to teachers’ capacity development on road safety and their attitudes to road safety education. It was found that only 26 percent of teachers at BMA schools received training on road safety knowledge dissemination, while 79 percent agreed that road safety education should be included at every school level. These findings lead to recommendations concerning the teacher professional development campaign to encourage teachers to include some aspects on road safety in their teaching as well as to improve their road safety teaching in more effective ways.