The schoolchildren confronting speeding motorists

In an effort to promote safe driving, a local artist painted a three-dimensional crosswalk near an elementary school. The idea came from school-aged children, noticing the intersection needed improvements, who brought it to City Hall officials. This initiative is part of a larger trend in using optical illusions to bolster traffic safety around the world.

Police Chief Bob Fitzsimmons personally connects with residents to combat increasing suicide rates, particularly among teens. Teachers reach out to the chief if one of the town’s 330 schoolchildren misses school, and he personally visits their home. His department funded popcorn and ice-cream sundae parties, as well as a New Year’s Day gathering, to ease the difficulty of isolation during COVID-19. He ensures residents’ achievements are publicly celebrated and grieves with families during tragedies, ensuring everyone has support in the rural area where medical and mental health services are scarcer.

Across Navajo Nation, young people are coming together to protect their elders through grassroots efforts and campaigns. They’ve created online campaigns, like Protect the Sacred and #NavajoStrong to help provide accurate information, collect donations, deliver medical supplies, and recruit medical professionals. They’ve come together on-the-ground, creating the Northern Dine Covid-19 Relief Effort to get clearing products, fresh food, and other supplies to households on the reservation.

Growing Change, a rural North Carolina youth organization that focuses on keeping kids out of jail, focuses on flipping prisons to not only revitalize and bring environmentally friendly practices to the community but also offer the kids something to work towards. In its initial pilot, the group saw a 92% success rate with keeping these kids out of jail and employed in the program.

The Vision Zero campaign aims to eliminate traffic deaths around the world. So far, Hoboken has made several changes to its streets and transportation policies to increase safety, such as repaving crosswalks to increase visibility, building curb extensions and adding bike lanes to roads. With these new safety measures in place, the city hasn’t reported a single traffic death since January 2017 and traffic-related injuries have dropped 41%.

The Donetsk Regional Children and Youth Center runs the Technology of Good Volunteering School, a program designed to help teenagers build social and civic skills and learn how to contribute to their communities. Graduates have spearheaded projects such as creating a children's room for a local hospital and sewing baby clothes for new mothers.

American cars made since the early 1980s have carried ratings from the federal New Car Assessment Program, showing how risky they are to human life in a crash. NCAP ratings motivated a host of safety enhancements by manufacturers. Since the 1990s, similar programs in the European Union, China, Australia, Korea, and Japan have also rated vehicles' risks to pedestrians and bicyclists, and their fatalities have dropped. Not so in the U.S., where industry resistance has stalled expansion of NCAP ratings. Advocates hope the Biden Transportation Department will finally expand the program.

New York City's Asphalt Art Initiative - created by Bloomberg Philanthropies - addresses pedestrian and traffic safety by taking to the streets and creating visual traffic flows with just a can of paint. Simple designs create more space for pedestrians and signal to drivers a larger curb or pedestrian area. Now, the organization is working to bring the simple concept to other American cities.

Cobb County, Georgia installed new license plate surveillance technology, loaned to them by the Atlanta-based company, Flock Safety. After installation, the test area saw a dramatic decrease in crime, to which Flock took credit for but experts say the connection could be due to a number of things. Furthermore, while surveillance technology has been correlated with decreased crime, communities have called into question issues of personal privacy versus public safety.

Across New Hampshire, youth are leading the fight against substance abuse. Programs like Dover’s Youth-to-Youth, Stand Up Sachems, Youth Leadership Through Adventure, and the Making it Happen Coalition, are all youth-led, adult-supported initiatives that are empowering young adults to create and disseminate substance abuse awareness and prevention campaigns. Fundamental to each of these efforts effective communication and creating a sense of community as key to prevention.