Tintin, an Unexpected Ambassador for Road Safety
With the start of the school year, caution is more important than ever. As classes resume, the areas around schools once again become busy zones, where hurried drivers, distracted children, and parents lost in thought all cross paths. This daily ballet on public roads calls for collective vigilance. But the real challenge is: how do we catch – and more importantly, keep – everyone’s attention?
An original idea, recently rediscovered in a letter exchange between Casterman and Hergé, might just… set an example!
Here is what the publisher from Tournai wrote to Tintin’s creator on August 3, 1955:
“As you probably know, Dutch schoolchildren themselves regulate vehicle traffic (…) at school opening and closing times. Our representative in the Netherlands believes it could be interesting to propose to the Traffic Services some metal or wooden signs depicting Tintin holding up the STOP disc. Would you see any objection to that?”

Linking Tintin to a road safety initiative? Now that’s an idea full of meaning. With the values he embodies, it’s hard to imagine a figure more legitimate to raise awareness among both young and old about road dangers. Hergé therefore agreed – on the condition, however, that the Dutch traffic police gave their official… green light.
That approval came on September 6. The publisher then returned to Hergé, asking him this time to provide the authorities with a model. Specifically: a drawing of “Tintin raising in his right hand a stick topped with a disc marked ‘stop,’ while holding Snowy in his left arm.”
A clear demonstration that the little hero imagined by Hergé also stood as a credible symbol of citizenship!
Texts and pictures © Hergé / Tintinimaginatio - 2025