Mini Orientation School for Beginners

Press Release

With their traditional “school cones” under their arms and safely accompanied by their parents, around 26,000 new first graders in Berlin will embark on their route from home to school through city traffic for the first time on August 26th 2006. However, the school beginners are not yet able to understand road traffic like adults and must be specially prepared for this journey. An important contribution here are the school route plans handed over on August 22^nd 2006 by Richard Gaul, Head of Group Communication and Policy of the BMW Group and Hans Zucker, Chairman of the Berlin State Traffic Safety Association, to Berlin’s School Senator Klaus Böger. Some 70 children aged between 5 and 7 also attended the event: they were given a playful introduction to traffic safety with the MINI road safety school, the puppet show “Konrad takes care” presented by the Berlin police and a demonstration of the motorist’s “blind spot”.

School route plans show the surrounding area of a school as a city map. They indicate particular dangers such as busy roads, missing traffic lights or complex crossings and provide recommendations for children to get to school safely and without being involved in accidents – even if a slight detour might be necessary. They also contain vivid diagrams and photos illustrating the most important rules and signs of the highway code.

“For the BMW Group, ‘Sheer Driving Please’ and road safety are inseparable, so we don’t only seek to advance active and passive safety in our vehicles but also take on responsibility for road users in general, beyond the product itself. As well as driver safety training courses for adult driving licence holders, we implement road safety programs for children, teenagers and beginning motorists in collaboration with specialists. We are particularly concerned for the safety of first graders on their way to school,” says Gaul, explaining the involvement of the BMW Group in this project.

"Parents are role models for their children. If mum and dad behave appropriately, carefully and vigilantly in road traffic, children will imitate them. The rule is: the safest route is the best one – not the shortest route. When the school year starts, it is particularly advisable for parents to practice following the new route to school with their parents. The route plans allow parents to see which routes to school are safe. School route plans are a supplement to curricular efforts at Berlin’s schools to enhance road safety,” says Berlin’s education senator Klaus Böger.

The BMW Group has supported the production of school route plans since 1998. Since then, some 44,000 school route plans have been produced for 383 schools in collaboration with the partners, the Berlin State Traffic Safety Association GmbH and Cöga, the Association for Work Support in Köpenick GmbH. The 2006 program itself comprises some 19,500 school route plans for 184 schools in the Berlin districts Mitte, Tempelhof-Schöneberg, Neukölln, Treptow-Köpenick, Marzahn-Hellersdorf, Pankow and Spandau. Work on school route plans for Reinickendorf will be completed in 2007, by which time 80 % of Berlin schools will be equipped with this orientation aid for school beginners.

In Munich, the company headquarters, the BMW Group has collaborated with the Traffic Safety Association and the District Council in the campaign “School Route Plans for School Beginners” since 1995. 130 Munich schools are now involved in this project. Especially to the parents the school route plans offer important support.

The result is positive: with 36 million school routes undertaken since 1993, not a single child has been killed on its way to school in Munich. The number of children injured has also decreased significantly.

Other projects of the BMW Group in the area of road safety training are for examples the information folder “Children in traffic – road traffic safety in paediatric surgeries”, which is aimed at paediatricians and their preventive work with parents.

The BMW Group also offers information brochures for parents, pregnant women and childcare institutions.

It is part of BMW Group’s philosophy to take on responsibility – not just in its entrepreneurial operations but also by means of involvement in social policy. For this reason it collaborates with academic and practical partners to initiate long-term projects in the areas of intercultural learning and international understanding, education, sponsorship of the highly gifted, HIV and AIDS prevention and road safety.

The social involvement of the BMW Group is a particular tradition at the Berlin plant. Apart from developing individualised school route plans of Berlin schools, the plant also acts as the patron in the field of employment for young people. For example, it supports the regional “Young Scientist” competition in Berlin North and has sponsored the Annedore Leber Vocational College, a training facility for disabled youngsters, for some 25 years. What is more, the BMW Group has made donations to neighbourhood projects for many years.