Kohl's Safety Street is an injury prevention program which features a classroom curriculum as well as an interactive, life-size cityscape to help children and families learn to safely navigate city streets. Instruction includes pedestrian and passenger safety, stranger awareness, stray animal awareness and bicycle safety.
Kohl's Safety Street is a St. Louis Children's Hospital community outreach program funded by a grant from Kohl's department stores.
Each number represented on the Safety Street photo corresponds with an explanation below. You can freeze the image by clicking on it, or you can zoom in or out using the magnifying glass tools in the grey toolbar.
To view a hotspot explanation, click on and use these corresponding links:
1) Visiting Kohl's Safety Street
When a child visits Safety Street he or she will see:
- Traffic lights changing
- Cars passing along the street and from back alleys
- The school bus making its stops
- The train and ambulances passing by
- Stray dogs barking
- Strangers attempting to lure the them
All of these opportunities for learning with constantly reinforced pedestrian safety tips, are part of the Safety Street experience.
2) Stranger Safety
We are careful to avoid invoking unnecessary fear in children. This is an opportunity to tell children they must be mindful of people they don’t know just as they must be careful when situations might be unsafe. This stranger is triggered by a motion sensor and asks the children for help finding a puppy or if they’d like some candy.
3) Animal Safety
Children learn respect and empathy for animals while avoiding dangerous animal situations and animals they do not know. They come to know the difference between harmless and harmful animals and exactly what to do to avoid ‘animal danger’. This pack of stray dogs begins barking as the children approach. We can then observe them demonstrating the right behaviors to keep themselves from harms way.
4) Pedestrian Safety
To illustrate another lesson in pedestrian safety, the white back-up lights on this car illuminate and the car backs out of the alley. Children are quick to learn that crossing any intersection requires their full attention and that the white lights on the car tells them it is backing up and may cause the driver not to see them.
5) Train Safety
Here the red lights illuminate and the crossing gates drop to alert the children of an oncoming train (either light rail or freight trains). It is here that we review the dangers surrounding train tracks and the importance of posted warning signs.
6) Police Station
The final stop on Safety Street is at the Police Station. Children walk to the front of the police station to talk with a St. Louis City or County uniformed police officer. The officer reviews all of the skills learned on Safety Street, reinforcing key messages and then providing each child with a completion certificate, safety coloring book and customized safety magnet.