Frankfurt/Main/Berlin (dpa/lhe) – School guides are less and less to be seen in Hesse. “Unfortunately, the number has fallen relatively sharply for us in recent years,” reported Thomas Conrad, Managing Director of the State Traffic Watch (LVW) in Hesse. Nationwide there are only around 200 student guides, six years ago there were still around 1000 participants.
According to Conrad, among other things, “the willingness of the students to do this is no longer so great, and this voluntary commitment is no longer appreciated”. In the past year there has been a little more inflow into the training. The Hessian State Traffic Watch continues to aim to maintain the school pilot service.
The school pilot service has officially existed for 70 years. On January 14, 1953, the Federal Minister of Transport at the time, Hans-Christoph Seebohm, introduced it for the Federal Republic. The impetus for the initiative was the large number of children who had road accidents at the time.
According to the German Traffic Watch, which provides the pilot equipment, for example, no serious or fatal accident has happened at crossings secured by pilots. Overall, however, the numbers are declining. According to estimates, there are still around 50,000 traffic assistants – as the pilots are called today – nationwide, including many adults.
According to the taxes, the first student pilot services in Germany were established in Baden-Württemberg at the end of the 1940s. The idea came from the USA, where young people had been securing the way to school for their younger classmates since the 1920s. American occupying forces brought the idea with them. The winner of the 1956 federal student guide competition, a 13-year-old boy from Kassel, was even allowed to travel to the USA and meet President Dwight David Eisenhower.
