Regev in the video.
6 million shekels will prevent tens of thousands of high school students from traffic education studies/documentation on social networks according to Section 27 A of the Copyright Law, photographs of surfers
"I'm on my way north and there was an accident here. I'm really asking: drive carefully, protect your life and the lives of passengers on the roads," urged the Minister of Transportation and Road Safety Miri Regev to viewers of a video she uploaded to social media, with an overturned car behind her.
But Regev's commitment to reducing road carnage stops when it needs to be financed.
In recent days, the National Road Safety Authority (Haralbad) decided on a dramatic cut in one of the most important projects it finances: traffic education for 10th grade students in high schools.
This is 30 hours of study, a special website, videos and presentations that teach future drivers about safe driving and its consideration, identifying dangers and dealing with them. An almost last chance for the education system to provide students with life-saving knowledge that will accompany them towards driving lessons, riding scooters and electric bicycles, and throughout their lives.
The program was launched a little less than a decade ago, with the understanding that education and information are more effective than punishment and enforcement. It also includes a bonus: the study material for the theory studies, so that at the end of it, the students take the test together, instead of studying books alone with an emphasis on the chances of success in the theoretical test, and without going deeper into the material.
Just four years ago, when the Ministry of Transportation celebrated a record of 45 thousand students who took the theory test in 2020, and Regev was the Minister of Transportation in her first term, she was proud: "The data proves that road safety starts at school.
Of the 45,000 10th grade students who participated this year in the new initiative of traffic education classes, 30,000 successfully passed the theoretical test and are prepared and ready to begin the course of study for the practical test.
" The program costs NIS 1 million, a relatively small amount compared to the budget of the Ministry of Transportation, every year, which is financed by the Harald, for the hours of study that the teachers spend in the education system.
However, as revealed in Walla Car, in the 2024 budget the Safety Authority's budget was cut by 10%, to NIS 62.5 million, as part of the cuts in the government ministries' budget.
Now it turns out that the Authority has decided that the bulk of the cut will come from the traffic education budget, which will lose 6 million shekels, 40% of its scope.
The meaning: tens of thousands of 15-16 year olds who will not learn traffic education.
Haralbad is defined as an independent authority, but Regev is very involved in the bodies under its responsibility, from the Airports Authority, to the Israel Railways Board, Israel Routes and the NTA company.
Since her return to the Ministry of Transportation, the chairman Avi Naor and the CEO Dr. Erez Kita, two professional appointments who came from the field, have left the RLBD.
Hatam: They were appointed by the previous Minister of Transportation, Merav Michaeli.
In the meantime, Regev only succeeded in appointing a new chairman to the Authority: retired superintendent Yoram Halevi.
Regev did not object to the cancellation of the cuts.
According to professionals, safety education is much more effective in reducing road carnage than enforcement and punishment later/screenshot, Facebook
Attorney Yaniv Yaakov, CEO of the Or Yerok association, said in response that "This is a cry for generations. Young drivers and teenagers are a population at high risk of being involved in traffic accidents, and they are also injured at a higher rate than their license holders. These are millions of individual shekels that will not change anything to the treasury but they are critical to saving the lives of young drivers. Such a significant cut is very bad news for road safety and may lead to an increase in deaths in road accidents already in the immediate term. Instead of strengthening safety values among the youth, the opposite and incomprehensible thing happens, where money is taken and the education of a generation is harmed The drivers are next. This is a dangerous step that must be prevented."
In response, the LLB stated: "We see great importance and benefit in traffic education in the education system, and a real opportunity to influence the generation of young drivers, and therefore in 2017, the authority led a comprehensive reform of traffic education in Israel and the entry, together with the Zahab Division of the Ministry of Education and the Licensing Division of the Ministry of Transportation and theory tests for 4,300 11th graders every year.
Unfortunately, due to a cut in the RLA's budget, the authority had to cut the traffic education budget, along with further cuts in RLA's spending on outreach, field activities, research, and more.
We hope that he will find a budget that will allow this important project to continue in the 2015 school year as well."
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