In 2017, 22 children were killed while walking across Hampshire’s roads.
New research from RoSPA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) has revealed that almost half (49 per cent) of children aged 6-11 have not received any form of pedestrian safety training in the past 12 months, despite road accidents being the leading cause of accidental death for children of that age.
Across the UK 5,838 children aged under 15 were injured in road accidents in 2017.
Results from a new YouGov survey, commissioned by RoSPA, reveal that almost half of parents say their children haven’t had any guidance about how to be ‘road safe’.
The latest accident figures from the Department of Transport demonstrate the need for further pedestrian safety training targeted at minors – 1,269 child pedestrians in the UK were killed or seriously injured in 2017.
Nick Lloyd, RoSPA’s acting head of road safety, told Love Andover, “Our survey has highlighted a clear demand among parents for more road safety training to be delivered to primary school-aged children.
“Meeting this need becomes all the more urgent when we consider the level of child road injury rates.
“The best way to teach children the road safety skills they need is to deliver real-world, practical lessons, so we have designed a suite of resources for teachers and parents to enable them to do this.
Mr Lloyd adds, “We want every child to have the opportunity to learn how to be a safe and confident pedestrian.”
Parents who would like to teach their children about road safety can find hints and tips, including the Green Cross Code, on the RoSPA website here.
To help schools from around Andover, RoSPA also has a free road safety training pack for teachers, aimed at equipping the town’s young people with the knowledge they need to be safe road users. It can be found here.
This week (April 1st – April 5th 2019) is Family Safety Week, a RoSPA bid to help millions of people protect their loved ones from accidents – the number of one cause of ‘preventable death’.
