Road Safety in the News

Thousands Of Pupils Hurt On Roads Near Schools

Recent statistics from Axa Car Insurance and the research body Road Safety Analysis showed:

• There were 85,814 child casualties on roads in a 500-metre radius around UK schools between 2006 and 2011, the equivalent of 1,190 a month.
• There were 557,200 vehicle collisions around schools during the six-year period, the equivalent of six collisions per school per year on average (including any incident reported to police involving any vehicle on a local road. Some did not result in injuries.)
• The top area for collisions was London (13% of total child casualties and 22% of collisions).
• Among cities with more than 100 schools, excluding London, Liverpool had the highest number of road injuries (deaths, serious injuries and slight injuries) around schools, followed by Nottingham, Manchester, Birmingham and Leicester.

The figures include collisions during school holidays, and the child casualty numbers do not necessarily refer to pupils at that particular school.

Road Safety Analysis director Dan Campsall said, "Translating this wealth of data into something that is meaningful for parents, teachers and community leaders has its challenges. However, it is important that these groups are able to understand the immediate road risks around their local schools if they are going to work effectively to secure safer communities for children in the future."

The Child Brain Injury Trust couldn't agree more.  We welcome any data that can help us plan how to keep children and young people safer on the roads.  We will be launching a road safety campaign in Autumn so watch this space!

Beth uses an egg chamber to demonstrate
the importance of seatbelts.

Our Road Safety Work

This week, our Scottish team attended West Drive, a Police Scotland event in Livingston aimed at 16 and 17 year old school pupils, designed to help them make better choices when driving or travelling as passengers in cars.   As always, we were delighted to have the opportunity to share our message about keeping your brain safe, in particular emphasising the importance of everybody in a vehicle wearing a seatbelt.

If you're interested in someone from the Child Brain Injury Trust attending your community event, please email us at info@cbituk.org.




Posted by Claire, Scottish Regional Fundraiser
Via skynews.com: http://news.sky.com/story/1134895/thousands-of-pupils-hurt-on-roads-near-schools