New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH) has launched a campaign named "Teach them young" to inculcate school students with aspects of road safety.

The move has been taken by Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, C.P. Joshi in view of increasing number of road accidents. He has decided to launch an awareness campaign covering about 10,000 schools across the nation starting with the first week of the New Year 2012.

This campaign will coincide with the safety week to be observed by the Ministry from January 1, 2012, to be propagated under the slogan: Accidents bring tears, safety brings cheers.

The Ministry has framed various themes to be demonstrated through different media such as posters, wall calendar, children activity books, books on road safety signs and signals in Hindi, English and regional languages to ensure wider access.

Four children activity books have been printed by ministry for age groups between 4 to 15 years. In these books, road safety measures have been conveyed in a simplified manner for easy grasping of children.

The campaign aims at educating children at a young age on road safety measures and teaching them to respect traffic rules. This will help in gradually decreasing the trend of road accidents, which claimed over 1.25 lakh lives in 2009, when more than 4.8 lakh accidents had taken place.