Girteka’s road safety caravan is back on the road for the second year in a row, bringing practical road safety education closer to people across Lithuania.
This year, the initiative is moving from schools to city festivals, where it aims to remind both children and adults how to stay safe around heavy-duty trucks.
This time, it will be visiting city festivals to remind not only children but also adults about road safety. On Saturday, the caravan made its first stop at the Marijampolė City Festival. There, participants had the opportunity to not only explore the city’s folk art and crafts fair or browse a car exhibition, but also to sit behind the wheel of a heavy-duty truck.
This marks the first stop this year for the initiative organized by the logistics company Girteka, which is running for the second consecutive year. Having mostly visited schools last year, this year the road safety caravan is traveling to city festivals and focusing more on families – children, parents, and all road users who share the road with heavy vehicles daily.
“This year, the caravan is setting off to the country’s cities and towns with the aim of spreading the word even more widely on how to behave safely in traffic around trucks. While last year we mostly spoke with schoolchildren, this year the focus is on families – both adults and children. We show the little ones what reflectors are for, remind them of road signs, and talk about safe behavior near a truck. While the children learn through games, the parents are interested in exploring the truck itself, sitting in the driver’s seat, and looking out from the cabin. We still notice that many people are surprised by the fact that when sitting so high up, you cannot see everything – blind spots remain one of the most important things that must be understood”, says Mindaugas Paulauskas, Director of Girteka Transport.
According to him, summer is the right time to remind people that even while vacationing, traveling, or spending time at a city festival, important road safety rules do not become less significant.
“We talk and will continue to talk throughout the year about how road users can stay safe around trucks. However, during the summer, we often relax and start relying on intuition instead of rules. We understand that dry lectures do not always work, which is why we educate people right where they spend their time – at summer festivals, through live demonstrations, games, and presentations of real-life situations. We believe that we must talk about road safety continuously and in various formats so that the knowledge sticks, and decisions on the road are driven by clear rules rather than intuition”, states M. Paulauskas.
A wolf cub introduces the trucks
In Marijampolė, festival participants could not only inspect the truck but also step into an educational space set up inside its semi-trailer. Here, children tried out the reflector zone, learning how reflectors work in the dark, why they are so important, and how to wear them correctly. During the educational session, they also recalled road signs, learned the main rules of road safety around trucks, and wrote down their promises on how they will behave responsibly on the road on a special board.
More than 100 children visited the educational space set up in the truck’s semi-trailer in Marijampolė. They were introduced to the road safety rules by Gedis the Wolf, the mascot of Girteka’s partner, VILNIUS TECH university.
“In this initiative, VILNIUS TECH and Girteka are united by a mutual goal – to turn technological and practical knowledge into an understandable, engaging experience for children. The mascot Gedis plays an important role here: he helps talk to children about road safety, heavy transport, and responsible behavior on the road in a language they can relate to. It is wonderful that the university’s symbol can become a friendly mediator between the technological world and children’s curiosity”, says Prof. Dr. Olegas Prentkovskis, Dean of the Faculty of Transport Engineering at VILNIUS TECH.
M. Paulauskas adds that the appearance of Gedis the Wolf in the educational program was no coincidence–the wordplay between “vilkiukas” (wolf cub) and “vilkikas” (truck) helps children open up more easily to conversations about serious road safety topics. Furthermore, the partners share the same goal: to raise responsible road users who know the rules, understand them, and rely on knowledge rather than intuition or guesswork when on the road.
The caravan will travel to other cities
The road safety caravan’s stop at the Marijampolė City Festival is just the first destination of this year’s initiative. According to M. Paulauskas, there are plans to visit more Lithuanian cities and towns this year, bringing the educational sessions to places where people of all ages gather during the summer.
“Last year, we visited seven schools. This year, we are not stopping – we are traveling to city festivals and continuing to talk about the fact that we cannot rely on intuition alone in traffic. We can only rely on the rules. However, in order to follow them, we must first know and understand them”, says M. Paulauskas.
About the road safety caravan
The road safety caravan is part of the “Be Safe on the Road” educational campaign implemented by the logistics company Girteka since 2020. The aim of the initiative is to educate the public, especially children and other road users, about safe behavior on the road when trucks are present.
Last year, the road safety caravan visited Širvintos, Kazlų Rūda, Stakliškės, Žiežmariai, Šiauliai, Gargždai, and Nevarėnai. This summer, the caravan plans to keep moving forward and visit as many Lithuanian cities and towns as possible.
