EU governments are committed to the reduction in the number of road fatalities and casualties. While the situation is improving, road traffic injuries are still the leading cause of death in the 5–24 years age group in Europe. It is widely accepted that learning good road safety habits at an early age is vital in order to create awareness and prevent accidents now and in the future. Teaching safety skills to children can provide lifelong benefits to society and should be seen as a long term intervention strategy as integral part of the school curriculum. Experience has shown that reliance on individuals or organisations visiting schools to give talks on road safety are not effective on their own. Effective and sustainable development of positive attitudes towards road safety are best achieved by inclusion in the core curriculum, either as a compulsory subject in its own right or as a cross-curricular theme. In the EU of 2018, only 8 countries have implemented road safety education as a mandatory school subject with the most resent addition to be Greece in 2018. There is a great variance across the EU in terms of the provision of mandatory traffic education for children, and the way those programmes are delivered. This is where KROS will make a contribution by creating a strategic partnership of Road Safety Experts, Pedagogues and Curriculum Developers, Local Authorities, Advanced Educational Applications Developers and schools. The network will be joining forces to design, develop and validate teachers professional development programs building on existing best practices and innovate where it is needed. The work is divided to seven main Activities, namely: A1 PROJECT MANAGEMENT & QUALITY ASSURANCE (Leader: RSI. Contributors: All partners), A2 DEFINITION OF THE PEDAGOGICAL FRAMEWORK (Leader: EA. Contributors: RSI, ITS and NUIG), A3 TRAINING PROGRAMME & MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT (Leader: RSI. Contributors: EA, CECE, BGS, ITS and NUIG), A4 PLATFORM DEPLOYMENT (Leader: OMEGA. Contributors: RSI, EA and NUIG), A5 SCHOOL IMPLEMENTATION & TRAINING ACTIVITIES (Leader: RSI. Contributors: EA, CECE, BGS, ITS and NUIG), A6 EVALUATION AND VALIIDATION (Leader: NUIG. Contributors: RSI, EA, CECE and ITS), A7 DISSEMINATION & EXPLOITATION ACTIVITIES. (Leader: ITS, Contributors: All partners). The main objectives of KROS are: O1: To improve teachers’ awareness of Road Safety education through traditional and technology based learning techniques, O2: To improve teachers’ professional skills enabling them to integrate Road Safety principles and best practices into their lessons, O3: To update, internationalize and deploy e-Drive Academy, a technology platform dealing with Road Safety training and awareness issues, O4: To develop a network of pilot schools which will act as living labs of the KROS approach, O5: To develop and pilot a systematic validation methodology that could identify the measurable impact of the proposed approach and O6: To develop a Road Safety Academy that will create a set of guidelines and recommendations that the professional development providers can use. Seven partners, with diversified and complementary activity, from six different countries will join forces to achieve these objectives. The three schools are at the core of our consortium operating in diversified national environments in terms of maturity, national framework and culture. EA is based in Greece, CECE a group of schools in Spain and BGS in Austria. RSI, the project’s coordinator, is a Greek road safety NGO that has been a pioneer in road safety introduction in Greek schools since 2009 and has been selected by the Ministry of Education as one of the major stakeholders to consult the ministry and participate in the development of the relevant curriculum. OMEGA, a Greek IT firm, has already developed the “e-Drive Academy”, a platform dealing with Road Safety training and awareness issues that will be deployed across Greek, Spanish and Austrian Schools. ITS a transport research institute located in Poland, will put together the Road Safety Academy guidelines. NUIG, a university in Ireland, will carry out the challenging task of validation of project interventions in order to make a significant contribution toward proving in socioeconomic terms and methodology the direct and indirect effectiveness and efficiency of introducing road safety in schools. The Knights of Road Safety Strategic Partnership is bringing together unique expertise in road safety research and implementation and awareness raising practices, in the development of innovative educational applications, in engaging teachers training approaches and in community building. The proposed Strategic Partnership has also access to a wide network of schools in Europe that will offer the test bed for the implementation of the case studies. All the project outcomes will be translated in Greek, Spanish, English and German and will be open to the public for further use.
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