On the occasion of the national Day of Responsibility in Traffic 2007, celebrated on 1st July, the Spanish bishop responsible for the pastoral care of the highways, the Right Rev. Carmelo Echenagusía, auxiliary bishop of Bilbao, issued a message with the title “Responsible as children”. “Children – writes the bishop – have the right to receive an integral education, which also comprises their responsibilities in community and civic life”. According to Echenagusía, an essential component of this education, from earliest childhood on, is “road education, educating children in community life and furnishing them with the best possible system of self-protection against the many and grave dangers involved day after day by the growing volume of traffic”. “Educating children in this field – continued the auxiliary bishop of Bilbao – means helping them to develop what we could call ‘a feeling for the road’, a clear conscience of forming part of a community that moves about either as pedestrians or with a whole series of vehicles (cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles), with many undeniable advantages for modern life, but also with grave risks for life and its integrity”. Even if everyone is responsible for this education, clearly “parents are the first and best educators of their children”, not only by forming their children, ever since infancy, in reflection and responsibility, but also by setting them a good example “both as pedestrians and as drivers”. But schools and church communities should also play a role in this sector, “by promoting the values of civil society on a Christian basis”.
