Budweiser promotes road safety awareness

Budweiser, the world's largest brewer by sales revenue, celebrated China's National Road Safety Day on Wednesday with a number of practical measures, including digital tools, to promote polite and safe driving on China's roads, in an effort to cut the number of traffic accidents.

By partnering with the Shanghai Public Security Bureau Traffic Police General Brigade, the company brought Hajiang, Budweiser's Gen-Z virtual idol who was named Shanghai's road safety ambassador by the city's traffic police in 2019, to share her exclusive stories about supporting road safety awareness campaigns across the country since last year.

To further ensure the effective dissemination of its "Smart Drinking" ideas, Budweiser has also participated in the "Traffic Safety Experiential Course" public service program under the guidance of the traffic management bureau of the Ministry of Public Security.

Through fun-packed interactive games, the program innovatively fuses traffic safety knowledge into the life and travel scenarios of children and teenagers, seeking to quickly enhance their essential traffic safety knowledge and rule-abiding awareness, said Frank Wang, chief legal and corporate affairs officer at Budweiser APAC.

Since 2016, the program has donated 3,676 "Magic Box" sets to primary schools, kindergartens and communities across the country, including 27 Hope Schools that have received direct contributions from Budweiser.

The program to date has also staged 10 national-level demonstrations and mobilized more than 1,000 volunteers to visit over 3,000 schools and communities for traffic safety education – already appearing in media reports hundreds of times, the awareness-building program has benefited more than 1 million children and teenagers in China, with its livestreamed courses viewed by more than 40 million online.

In China, more than 20,000 children aged 17 and under lost their lives or suffered injuries in road traffic accidents in 2019. Road traffic injuries are the No 1 cause of child deaths from accidental injuries, the second leading cause of deaths for children aged 14 and under, according to data released by the Ministry of Public Security.

"We will work with institutions and individuals from both public and private sectors, such as traffic management authorities, experts and researchers, and nongovernmental organizations, to maximize the sharing and coordination of resources and efforts, as we deeply investigate urban traffic management needs and explore innovative, practical solutions," said Wang.

Chai Yongzhi, a professor of urban planning at Beijing Jiaotong University, said the traffic networks of many Chinese cities are larger than other major cities in Europe and the United States.

"Improving people's awareness of safer driving is a practical way of cutting unnecessary road accidents and keeping up with the process of healthy urbanization in China," he added.