- Road Traffic Injuries
- What is being done?
- What can we do?
- Key messages for children
- Real life stories
- Links
- Did you know..
Road traffic injuries are the leading mechanism of fatal injuries in the WHO European region.
Road traffic injuries - What can we do?
There are a lot of good resources available to help children learn and understand about staying safe when using the road. These include some excellent interactive resources for younger children on www.dft.gov.uk/think, including materials related to the latest publicity campaigns as well as more detailed educational resources, the children’s traffic club for pre-school children, and materials produced by CAPT and RoSPA. More information about these and other resources are available here.
There are also a number of good schemes available for practical training about walking and cycling on the roads, such as Kerbcraft and Bikeability. These are designed to develop safe road crossing skills and encourage safe cycling, with the added benefit of possibly giving pupils a better appreciation of the road from a driver’s perspective, which may help to change their habits as future car drivers.
To help increase risk awareness and safety on or near the road, the best advice is to get out there and walk with the children, talk about what you are doing and looking out for along the way, then get them to lead the way for a while (keeping a close eye of course), telling you what they are doing and looking out for. The more aware young people are of the dangers and how to deal with them, and the more practice they get, the safer they will be when walking on their own.
Understanding their role as car passengers is also important – not distracting the driver, using seatbelts, and knowing not to travel with drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Children and young people develop attitudes that will influence their behaviour as car drivers or moped / motorcycle riders long before they are legally allowed to drive or ride and this needs to be kept in mind when behaving as a role model and when working with young people in relation to road use and safety.
