The girls and boys from Uhlandstraße elementary school, who are standing outside the school building on Rennpatt in Solingen-Ohligs well before eight o'clock in the morning, know exactly what to do when the three school buses arrive one after the other: They position themselves at the doors, accompany their classmates to the school gates and keep track of the hustle and bustle of the arriving children.

But these are by no means all the tasks of the traffic scouts: they help the first graders in particular to cross the road correctly, prevent them from crossing at inappropriate places, ensure that parents do not maneuver their cars recklessly or park uncontrollably and make both parents and teachers aware of their role model function. The fourth graders were trained for this by the Solingen traffic accident prevention team from the Wuppertal police.

At the Uhlandstraße elementary school, which is currently relocated to Rennpatt in Ohligs due to the renovation of the school building, which is why the majority of children now come by school bus, the 48 traffic scouts have also been trained as bus attendants: They ensure safety when getting on and off the bus and sitting correctly on the bus.

The traffic scouts can be recognized by their orange vests and bright yellow caps. Daniela Berghaus and Beate Lenz from Traffic Accident Prevention Solingen recently brought the highly motivated traffic scouts another supply of yellow caps to ensure that all of them are equipped with them.

The idea for the project was born in 2017: "The idea was - with the support of the fourth-graders, who are enthusiastic about the new task - to offer anxious parents support in letting go of their children so that the children can manage the journey to school on their own," explains road safety advisor Ulrich Schmidt. There are now already traffic scouts at three elementary school in Solingen. "Traffic scouts can be trained at all elementary school," continues Schmidt. The results are consistently positive: "Once a school has experienced the benefits of the traffic scouts, it no longer wants to do without them, so we train new fourth-graders as traffic scouts every year."