Educational Programs for Children Provided by Honda

In Japan, Honda offers educational programs and teaching methods to instructors who engage in traffic safety activities in their local communities. Previous year, a study was conducted to verify the effectiveness of Honda's educational materials in changing people’s behaviors to act more safely. The results showed that with the passage of time, participants’ behavior returned to the level observed before the education, and therefore, continuous education is necessary. Based on these findings, Honda considered creating educational materials that allowed teachers at elementary schools, kindergartens, and nursery schools to educate children about traffic safety in brief morning and afternoon sessions.

In response to the teachers' opinions, Honda focused on making the educational materials easy to use and entertaining for children so that they could raise their awareness on safety behaviors as they enjoy learning about them. Through this approach, Honda created a titled “Sing, Dance and ‘Stop, Meow!’” for small children in kindergartens and nursery schools, and a digitalized Japanese card game called "Digital Traffic Safety Karuta" for elementary school students. *Karuta : Karuta consist of two types of cards with pictures or writing drawn of them “Sing, Dance and ‘Stop, Meow!’”was arranged in such a way to help small children learn enjoyingly the basic actions that they needed to take beforehand in order to cross a road safely, which were to “stop”, “look” and “wait”. Simple bodily movements that go along with the tune were added as part of the children’s physical exercise and "Stop Meow!”

sign magnets that resemble traffic signs and road markings were installed at hazardous spots created within the premise of kindergartens and nursery schools, based on the concept of making the children get naturally accustomed to the act of “taking a pause” in their daily lives. The "Digital Traffic Safety Karuta" was created basically as a digitalized version of "Honda Traffic Safety Karuta" The format of this card game was devised to provoke children to think about safety traffic behaviors, such as, traffic rules and appropriate manners by looking at what is illustrated and reading what is written on each picture card to understand the true meaning of each message delivered through words and illustration. The cards have been created with an animation feature so that students could visually grasp how they should behave safely in various traffic situations. The time spent on teaching them about traffic safety has been designed to be about two minutes per card to allow the teachers to use the cards iteratively in a relatively short period of time without feeling burdensome and arrange their presentation freely by combining multiple cards of their choice according to the length of time they want to spend in each session.

Honda intends to continue working closely with local traffic safety instructors and academic institutions to prepare educational programs on traffic safety that are more effective than ever by proposing innovative methods and creating smart teaching materials to maintain and enhance the effectiveness of these educational tools with an ultimate aim to build a safety society of zero traffic collision fatalities.