It looks like all fun and games as a clown-like character dressed in canary yellow bibs and fuzzy red hair bounces around a gymnasium full of excited students, giving high fives and leading them in the chorus of a rap song.

“We don’t act silly whenever we ride, because a Safe Rider keeps safety in mind. So look ahead and watch your toes, always step safely and safely you will go!”

But don’t be fooled by the amusing antics. Safe-T Rider, as the character is known, is on a mission to teach kids about elevator and escalator safety. It’s a mission taken very seriously by elevator and escalator maker Kone.

In fact, the Lisle, Ill.-based company with Quad-City roots and its employees are so dedicated to the Safe-T Rider program that they are on track to reach 10,000 children across North America by the end of the year. Their efforts are part of a larger public education campaign led by the Elevator Escalator Safety Foundation, which created the program.

It’s a problem that gets little attention, but accidents do happen on escalators, elevators and moving walks. It has been an eye-opener for Vance Tang, Kone executive vice president and area director for the Americas, who joined the industry three years ago.

According to Tang, “99.9 percent of the time, everything works out fine. But people abuse and misuse these things all the time. They do things that they wouldn’t do in any other industrial equipment.”

While the industry does not keep statistics, most accident involve children and senior citizens, which is why the safety foundation created the Safe-T Rider program for children and A Safe Ride program for adults.

“We want to get them when they’re young and eager to learn,” Tang said of the school-age program. The thought is youngsters will take what they learn and “even have enough courage to challenge their

parents,” he said. “We see it all the time — a mother balancing her stroller on an escalator, a kid running up the down side just for fun, or a rider carrying too many packages.”

On a recent Friday, a team of Quad-City Kone employees took the Safe-T Rider program to Seton Catholic School in Moline where Kone’s Brent Andrews quizzed the first- to fourth-graders on how they thought an elevator and escalator worked. Andrews, the company’s production manger, then cleared up myths that often exist in the minds of the youngest riders. “You might have heard that a steel cable can break and the elevator can fall down. That is not true,” he said.

But it was Safe-T Rider who stole the show — first as the star of a short video that taught the Seton students the rules for being a safe rider. When Safe-T Rider arrived in person, the crowd went wild. By the end of the program, they all had learned and screamed “Safety is number one!”

Second graders Mason Minks, Chase Carruthers and Drew Coleman now will think about safe riding, something they hadn’t thought about before. Chase even planned to go home and teach his brother what he learned because, as he said, “he breaks the rules.”

Their classmate, Jarod Portner, also picked up safety tips about holding on to the rail, checking his shoestrings and holding hands of little kids. He won’t have to teach them at home because his mother, Patti, works at Kone. “But she doesn’t have an escalator,” he said.

Andrews, who led the Kone team on this day, said there are plenty of Kone employees willing to be part of the important training. “It’s nice to get out and share the message,” he said. “Hopefully the kids go back to share the message.”

Andrews said estimates are that 7,500 people are hurt each year on escalators in the United States.

Janet Freeland, who played Safe-T Rider this day, loves taking the program out to Quad-City schools. “The kids really love it, they eat it up,” she said.

Freeland, who works in Kone’s sales initiatives and training, knows the presentation has made an impact when she hears students recite the rules after each program. She said children are more prone to have accidents “because this is the age group when parents start letting go of hands … and giving them a little more freedom.”

Safe-T Rider is the brainchild of the Elevator Escalator Safety Foundation, which was created in 1991 by the industry. Its sole mission is to educate the public on the safe and proper use of elevators, escalators and moving walks.

Ashley Rains, the foundation’s public relations director, said the entire industry has embraced the Safe-T Rider and other educational programs. “But Kone’s company initiative is leading the charge. Other companies are following suit because of what Kone is doing.”

Through the foundation, Safe-T Rider was shared with 515,000 school children in the United States and Canada during the 2008/2009 school year, she said. “Last year was a record-setting year,’’ she said, predicting the foundation’s members will reach 700,000 this school year.

Like others in the industry, Kone had been a longtime financial supporter of the foundation. “More people are willing to give money than time,” Tang said. “The fact is that it’s tricky to get out there and deliver it.”

Kone kicked off the initiative in January after 100 senior leaders gave it a trial run as part of a teamwork building at the company’s 2009 Leaders Meeting in Chicago. “One hundred of us delivered the training to 1,000 kids in one day,” he said. “At that meeting I challenged every participant to go wherever they are based and do it at schools in their area.”

Tang knows they are making an impact. “You know you’re getting into the minds of those kids. The times I did it I was fascinated by how much they already do know.”

Tang said Kone has not really set a goal for the number of children it wants to reach next year. But with the company on track to present it to 10,000 kids this year, he suspects next year “it will be going up.”