THE NEED
India records the highest number of road crash fatalities globally, making road safety a critical public health and development challenge. Among the most vulnerable are children — as pedestrians, cyclists, and passengers navigating increasingly complex urban roads.
An estimated 25 children lose their lives every day on Indian roads, often due to unsafe road environments, limited awareness, and lack of structured road safety education.
United Way Mumbai implements VIA: Global Road Safety Education via a New Generation — an internationally recognised school-based programme that builds safe road behaviours among children while strengthening the ecosystem around them.
Developed by the Corporate Foundations of Michelin and TotalEnergies, with support from the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) hosted by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the VIA programme brings global road safety expertise to school communities across India.
School-based road safety education programmes like VIA play a critical role in preventing road accidents among children by building awareness, encouraging responsible behaviour and improving safety around school zones.
Children face unique risks while navigating roads as pedestrians, cyclists and passengers. Limited risk perception, unsafe walking routes, lack of pedestrian infrastructure, and inadequate road safety awareness significantly increase their vulnerability.
Despite this, child-focused road safety education remains limited within school systems, and parents and teachers often lack the tools to reinforce safe behaviour outside the classroom.
Without early awareness and behaviour change interventions, children continue to face avoidable risks during their daily journeys to and from school.
A comprehensive approach to child road safety therefore requires education, safer environments, and stronger community engagement around schools.
SOLUTION
United Way Mumbai implements the VIA programme through long-term partnerships with schools, creating a supportive environment where children, teachers, parents, and local authorities collectively promote safer roads.
By partnering with United Way Mumbai, corporates and philanthropic organisations can support structured road safety education programmes that protect children and strengthen safer school environments.
Your support can help:
- Expand road safety education programmes across more schools
- Improve safe mobility awareness among children and families
- Strengthen school-zone safety through audits and community engagement
- Promote responsible road behaviour and long-term accident prevention
Together, we can help ensure that every child’s journey to and from school is safer.
- Each engagement begins with a road safety audit of the school surroundings, assessing traffic risks, pedestrian safety gaps, and environmental hazards that affect children’s daily commute.
- These findings are shared with school authorities and incorporated into the programme’s training design, ensuring that the programme reflects the real risks children face in their local environment.
- These findings are shared with school authorities and incorporated into the programme’s training design, ensuring that the programme reflects the real risks children face in their local environment.
- Students participate in interactive road safety learning modules that help them understand traffic rules, recognise risky behaviours, and adopt safe practices while walking, cycling, or travelling on roads.
- The training combines classroom learning, practical demonstrations, group activities, and interactions with road safety professionals, helping children build confidence and awareness about how to navigate roads safely.
- The training combines classroom learning, practical demonstrations, group activities, and interactions with road safety professionals, helping children build confidence and awareness about how to navigate roads safely.
- Sustained road safety outcomes require support beyond the classroom. The programme therefore engages teachers, parents, and local traffic authorities to strengthen awareness and collective responsibility for child road safety.
- Through workshops and sensitisation sessions, adults learn how to reinforce safe road behaviour and contribute to safer school zones, while partnerships with local traffic police help strengthen enforcement and community-level support.
- Through workshops and sensitisation sessions, adults learn how to reinforce safe road behaviour and contribute to safer school zones, while partnerships with local traffic police help strengthen enforcement and community-level support.
