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Road safety: when art helps make school roads safer
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The Renault Foundation is leading an innovative project that combines road safety and urban art. Its goal? To create ground murals near schools across France to prevent accidents, reduce incivility, and enhance the living environment. This initiative aligns with the Foundation’s roadmap, which focuses on safety, support, and emergency aid.
Reducing road accidents and incivility
As the school year gets underway, students in cities such as Douai, Cléon, Les Mureaux, and more recently Boulogne-Billancourt, are enjoying more cheerful journeys thanks to artistic murals painted on the pavement near their schools. This initiative, “School Safety by Art”, has been carried out since late 2024 by the Renault Foundation as part of its mission to promote road safety—a key pillar of its sustainable development strategy.
“The three missions of the Renault Foundation are road safety, support for the most vulnerable by promoting inclusive mobility, and emergency aid, including during natural disasters. The Foundation is particularly committed to contributing to road safety education and prevention, enabling all road users—drivers, passengers, cyclists, and pedestrians—to travel more safely. School Safety by Art is a perfect illustration of this commitment.”
Jean Descours
Project Director for Philanthropy at Renault Group
Experiments conducted by the Bloomberg Foundation in the United States, involving similar murals in protected zones, have shown not only a reduction in incivility among road users but also a significant drop in road accidents. These artworks improve the visibility of pedestrian crossings, encouraging vehicles to slow down and thereby making the area safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
According to a study conducted by the American foundation across 50 schools, such ground murals lead to:
- A 50% reduction in accidents involving pedestrians or other “vulnerable” road users
- A 25% decrease in conflicts between drivers and pedestrians at crossings
- A 38% drop in pedestrians crossing during green lights
- An overall 17% reduction in accidents
Enhancing the living environment
These artistic murals also help beautify the urban landscape for local residents—an argument that resonates with the municipalities involved. The themes depicted in the artworks often reflect the city’s history—such as the Seine River in Les Mureaux or the sea in Dieppe—as well as broader themes like diversity, community, and the environment.
City of Cléon in Normandy, floor murals achieved in April 2025 near two elementary schools.
Cléon. French painter Naïf chose to paint on the themes of ecology, secularism, and fraternity.
Cléon. Murals are created using a special cold-applied paint in a palette of up to five colors.
City of Douai, North of France. Designed by the illustrator, the murals are then created using stencils by teams from the agency Palm (Peint à la Main).
Douai. The work requires traffic stoppages or is often carried out at night.
Douai, the murals have been painted near two elementary schools.
Following installations in Les Mureaux in summer 2024, Cléon in April, and then Douai and Boulogne-Billancourt this summer, new murals are set to appear in Dieppe in early September and Maubeuge at the end of the month. While the Renault Foundation initially focused on cities tied to Renault Group’s history, it is now considering expanding the initiative to other cities across France.