Vietnam's Safe School Zones Guide (SSZ Guide) brings safe school zones closer to reality for all students nationwide, proving that small actions can lead to significant impact. Two years in the making, the SSZ Guide is a reliable blueprint for urban planners, engineers, and policymakers to address the safe mobility issue around Vietnamese schools.

The launch webinar introduced the SSZ Guide, sharing the process of creation and collaboration with the government. A panel discussion on global road safety followed, featuring key voices and expert leaders from the Ministry of Transport and FIA Foundation, which explored how similar initiatives could be implemented and scaled in other countries.

"The FIA Foundation is pleased to support the global launch of the SSZ Guide, a collaborative effort with our partner, AIP Foundation, and the Government of Vietnam. This guide showcases how to scale road safety interventions from local pilot schemes to national guidance with collaborative action. Sharing the SSZ Guide opens up the experience and best practice in Vietnam to a broader audience, which can support NGOs and governments to implement similar initiatives to make safe journeys to school a reality around the world," said FIA Foundation Executive Director Saul Billingsley, who opened the event.

In Vietnam, over 17 million children travel daily to school, many without sidewalks to protect them from high-speed, motorized vehicles. Alarmingly, traffic speeds around schools frequently and significantly exceed internationally recommended school zone speed limits. To safeguard the lives of young students on their journeys to school, the AIP Foundation developed the SSZ Guide in partnership with the FIA Foundation.

The Ministry of Transport officially recommended the SSZ Guide for school zone infrastructure design in the summer of 2023. The success of the Slow Zones, Safe Zones project in Pleiku City resulted in the development of the SSZ guide. The guide was piloted regionally at three schools, which saw an overall road crash decrease of almost 21%.

The global launch of the guide follows an official hand-over of the guide to the Ministry of Transport (MOT) of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in a meeting between the AIP Foundation and the FIA Foundation earlier in the year. Based on the encouraging results of the pilot study and government support, the SSZ Guide will be scaled up to build the evidence base to support legislation strengthening a legal school zone definition in Vietnam, which would require all school zone developments to meet a minimum safety standard aligned with the parameters of the SSZ Guide.

Provinces around Vietnam are now working to incorporate the SSZ Guide into school zone safety work. In Hai Duong province, FIA Foundation and AIP Foundation teams recently visited a primary school that the provincial government modified following engagement and training with the SSZ Guide. The meeting and school visit in Hai Duong demonstrated the Safe School Zones Guide's effectiveness in improving safety for students when commuting to and from school through the Hai Duong government's investment of USD 110,000 to enhance safety for six school zones in the province. Similarly, Gia Lai province has made significant progress by upgrading the infrastructure of 12 primary and secondary schools in Pleiku City.

"We are so proud to collaborate with the government of Vietnam to enshrine the right of every student to travel to and from school safely. This SSZ Guide marks a monumental shift toward safeguarding our future generation, and we are so excited to share it with the world today," said Mirjam Sidik, Chief Executive Officer at AIP Foundation. The SSZ Guide aims to provide a policy and procedure framework for safe school zones to be constructed and implemented around the country.

Read the guide: Safe-School-Zones-Guide.pdf (aip-foundation.org)