There are 12,000 first graders in the wider Zagreb area this year and more than 40,000 throughout Croatia.
Police will step up traffic control just before and after classes on the roads and crossroads near schools, said Josip Mataija, head of the Road Traffic Safety Service.
In the first eight months of 2015, the number of children killed in traffic was the same as at the same time last year (7), the number of seriously injured children was down eight percent and those injured lightly by 2.25%, Mataija said. He warned that children too often had accidents in their parents' cars because they rode on the front seat or without a belt or in unsafe baby seats in the back.
Speaking of road traffic safety around the country, he said the number of casualties in the first eight months of 2015 was up 6.5% on the year.
Viktor Forjan of the Zagreb police said no child was killed in traffic in the capital in the first eight months of 2015 and that the number of children injured in traffic was down, with 135 injured in said period, 12 seriously and 123 lightly.