By next year, school trips to the Road Safety Community Park in East Coast Park will include a virtual reality (VR) experience to simulate crossing the road, complete with 360-degree videos and an interactive game.
They were developed by the Traffic Police and Singapore Road Safety Council (SRSC) in partnership with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), tech giant Samsung and Harley-Davidson.
Mr Adrian Lim, IMDA director of the sectoral innovation group in education, said that VR offers a safe and controlled environment to teach road safety, since “it’s impossible to bring 40 kids to the roadside to show them how to cross the road”.
The Road Sensibility VR experience guides motorcyclists in practising safe riding behaviour, while Eyes On The Road puts users in the seat of a driver who gets distracted by his electronic device and is killed in an accident.
They will both be made available at driving centres here by 2018.
Efforts must also include outreach to three groups identified as particularly vulnerable on the roads – motorcyclists, elderly pedestrians and children.
SRSC chairman Bernard Tay said: “Hopefully, children can bring home (these messages) and teach parents and grandparents about road safety.”
He added: “Eventually, when it (VR) is useful, we will have it for the elderly as well.”
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Source: The Straits Times, 27 May 2017