Traffic police in Moscow offered rides on horses and ponies¹ painted as zebras Friday in an attempt to improve road safety and raise awareness² among Russia's notoriously careless drivers.

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。

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.

The police dispatched（派遣，调度） the fake zebras to several different locations in the Russian capital, where officials in orange vests walked 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, footage aired on television showed.

Russian roads are notoriously（众所周知地） dangerous and drivers still rarely give way to pedestrians³（行人） .

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 activists⁴ still fumed⁵ over the idea, accusing the police of "treating animals like garbage."

"Children understand that paints are toxic⁶ for animals: they can cause internal swelling⁷（肿胀） ," the Interfax news agency quoted president of Vita animal rights group Irina Novozhilova as saying.