Sadly many thousands of people are killed or seriously injured on the UK's roads every year.

Reduction targets for fatal and serious injury accidents have been set by the Department for Transport (DfT).

Although Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) are generally lower per head of population in UK than in rest of Europe and the World, the rate of childhood accidents and child pedestrian accidents particularly is higher than in many places in the developed world.

Why?  

There are a number of possible reasons for this:-  

• Environment - terraced streets, busy roads, we live in one of the most densely populated islands in the world.
• Exposure - children are increasingly protected by parents, doing more journeys by car than in other countries. 
• Education - children have no statutory road safety education. Schools support our work but there are significant demands on their time to deliver the national curriculum.
• Experience - children's experience of roads is therefore greatly reduced so when they get the freedom to travel they do not have the necessary skills to cope with today's traffic.

As with most areas child casualties peak at age 11-15 but they start to rise around age 7-8. This almost certainly relates to the level of exposure that children have.

What is Wakefield Council doing about it?

The Council delivers Road Safety education, training and publicity via child pedestrian and cyclist training programmes. These courses have been developed over several years to provide training that is acceptable in schools, useful to children and shows a steady decline in road casualties.

The training programme aims to make children more aware of traffic and better able to cope with it. In our increasingly car orientated society children are not exposed to traffic as much as their parents and grand parents were, so when they do need to walk and cycle they lack the experience they need. This training schemes aim to provide some safe experience of the roads in the company of experienced adults.

We also want to promote walking and cycling to school. We arrange walking buses, with help from schools and provide training for cyclists. You can find out more about walking and cycling to school safely, about Safe Routes to School, and some of the training courses on offer.