Trucks
“Stop, Look, Wave” was launched on the initiative of Volvo Trucks and was rolled out throughout the Volvo Group last year. The aim is to help children understand how to act safely in traffic. All of the Group’s employees have been encouraged to spread the campaign among their children and their classmates.
One example is Brazil, where around 70 employees of Volvo do Brasil got involved. They visit schools, teaching children how a truck operates, how to behave around trucks and what truck drivers can and cannot see from their driver’s seats.
“Here in Brazil, the large number of road accidents is a social issue. I want to be involved and help spread knowledge. It’s fantastic to get this great contact with kids and know that you’re making a difference,” reports Osia Castro of Volvo do Brasil in Curitiba, one of the employees who have volunteered within the campaign.
Natalia Cristina Pilli, 12, is one of the children who learned how important it is to stop at the edge of the road, make eye contact with the driver and make oneself visible by waving before crossing a road.
“We learned that there are places around the vehicle where it is more difficult to be seen, and if you step out into the road in front of a truck, you might get run over,” she says.
Over the course of 2015, the campaign reached 1,200 children in Brazil, and Volvo Group want to spread the campaign to as many children as possible.
Brazil is just one example of how successful “Stop, Look, Wave” has become. The campaign is growing and is now expanding around the globe. So far, over 50,000 children have learnt to “Stop, Look and Wave” to truck drivers.
Another example is Bangalore in India, where Volvo Group employees helped to educate just over 1,000 children. The target is to reach 3,000 children by mid-2016.
The campaign is also spreading in Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Korea, South Africa and China, among other places.
This year, the campaign is also being awarded the Volvo Group Internal Safety Prize, something that Peter Kronberg, Safety Director for the Volvo Group, considers heartening news.
“It’s been a really successful programme, designed in such a way that it has truly managed to inspire both adults and children,” he declares.
The safety prize is awarded to employees or teams that have successfully contributed to improving safety for customers or – as in this case – for society as a whole. The prize is intended to inspire others and to reinforce the Group’s key value of safety.
“It’s great that the initiative has become so widespread and that so many people have become so personally involved in it. Together, I really think that we will make a difference to children’s safety on the roads,” enthuses Volvo Trucks’ Sara Kuylenstierna, who, together with Beatrice Cardon of Volvo Group Belgium and Christina Eriksson of Volvo Trucks, did much of the groundwork and will be accepting the award on behalf of the “Stop, Look ,Wave” initiative.
Want to know more about how the campaign works? Find the campaign material available for download here.