People participate in an event staged by traffic police to raise road safety awareness amongst school children in Moscow. The event, featuring horses painted with zebra markings was staged to encourage children to use zebra crossings.
Traffic police in Moscow offered rides on horses and ponies painted as zebras Friday in an attempt to improve road safety and raise awareness among Russia's notoriously careless drivers.
The police dispatched the fake zebras to several different locations in the Russian capital, where officials in orange vestswalked them over zebra crossings and handed out flyers to passing drivers.
Some held up rainbow-coloured umbrellas over the painted animals to protect them from the rain, footageaired on television showed.
Russian roads are notoriously dangerous and drivers still rarely give way to pedestrians.
More than 9,500 people were killed and more than 100,000 injured in road accidents in the first six months of 2010, according to official statistics.
Nearly half of all traffic accidents in the country's big cities are caused by cars hitting pedestrians, and a third of those occur on crossings, according to traffic police figures published last month.
Though police officials said that only safe paint would be used on the animals, animal rights activists still fumedoverthe idea, accusing the police of "treating animals like garbage."
"Children understand that paints are toxic for animals: they can cause internal swelling," the Interfax news agency quoted president of Vita animal rights group Irina Novozhilova as saying.
上周五，莫斯科交通警察让路人有幸看到用油漆刷成的“斑马”，此举旨在改善道路交通安全，让俄罗斯那些声名狼藉的粗心司机提高安全意识。
警察让这些假斑马前往首都莫斯科的几处不同地段，穿橘色坎肩的警官带着它们走过斑马线，向过往的司机分发传单。
从电视上播放的片段可以看到，有些人替这些刷过油漆的动物撑起了五颜六色的雨伞，保护它们不受雨淋。
俄罗斯的道路是出了名的危险，司机也很少给行人让道。
根据官方数据，在2010年前上半年发生的交通事故中，就有9500多人丧生，10万多人受伤。
根据交通警察上月发布的数据，在该国大城市发生的所有交通事故中，近一半是汽车撞上行人造成的，其中有三分之一是在穿越马路时发生的。
尽管警官说只有安全的油漆才会在动物身上使用，动物权利积极分子依然对这一主意十分恼火，谴责警方“像对待垃圾一样对待动物”。
俄罗斯国际文传电讯社援引维塔动物权利保护组织主席艾琳娜 诺瓦兹罗娃的话说：“孩子懂得油漆对动物是有毒的：它们会导致体内肿胀。”
Vocabulary:
vest: a special piece of clothing that covers the upper part of the body 坎肩；（外面穿的）背心
footage: part of a film showing a particular event （影片中的）连续镜头，片段
fume over sth.: to be very angry about something（对……大为生气，十分恼火）
（编辑：Evalynn）
