What’s My Claim Worth are proud to be supporting Child Safety Week. Here is our guide on keeping our children safe by the roadside.
Child Safety Week runs from the 3rd – 9th June 2024. This annual campaign is organised by CAPT (Child Accident Prevention Trust) raising awareness of the risks of child accidents and how they can be prevented. The safety of our children is a serious concern for all parents, particularly as roads become more congested.
At What’s My Claim Worth we help many families who have been affected by injuries to their children at the roadside. If you or someone you know needs our assistance, please call our personal injury team on freephone 01244 568 535 and we can let you know if we can help with a claim.
Despite efforts made at school and home to reinforce the dangers of our roadside, children are still learning and are naïve to the dangers and often have momentary lapses of concentration with devastating effect. Ensuring child safety by the roadside requires a multi-faceted. Here is our comprehensive guide on how to keep our children safe near roads.
1. Education and Awareness
Teaching Road Safety Rules
From an early age, children should be taught basic road safety rules, such as looking both ways before crossing, understanding traffic signals, and using pedestrian crossings. These lessons should be repeated at school and at home and reinforced regularly.
As parents, we are operating a lethal weapon when we get behind the wheel. Advanced driving lessons for those who feel they could improve their driving skills are available locally.
Young drivers, who often as a result of immaturity and peer pressure can cause significant injuries and even death.
Role-Playing and Simulations
Parents can engage children in role-playing exercises and simulating road-crossing scenarios in a controlled environment can help them learn how to act in real-life situations.
Educational Programs
Schools and community centres regularly incorporate road safety education into their curriculum and programmes led by traffic safety experts can provide valuable knowledge and interactive learning.
2. Safe Road Infrastructure
Child-Friendly Crossings
Crossings, particularly near schools and playgrounds, should be clearly marked and be equipped with street furniture such as traffic lights and pedestrian signals.
Speed humps, they provide a valuable tool to slow down vehicles.
Adequate Signage
Roads frequented by children should have prominent signs indicating school zones, pedestrian crossings, and speed limits. These signs should be visible and well-maintained. If parents feel that children are not being adequately protected from speeding vehicles in your area, they can always contact the highways agency and local councils and get involved in local groups that campaign to make roads safer such as RoadPeace.
Pavements and Barriers
We live on a very populated island with little space, but wherever possible, pavements should be wide, unobstructed, and well-lit. We all have a duty to ensure that shrubbery close to pavements do not grow over and obstruct the pavement.
Problems with potholes and overgrown shrubbery can always be reported to your local council or highways department.
Pavements are for pedestrians and not cars, so be mindful not to park on pavements as this obstructs pedestrians and damages the pavement itself.
Physical barriers, such as fences or bollards, can prevent children from accidentally stepping onto the road.
Traffic Calming Measures
A life lost through road death is needless. Speed is often a factor. All road users have a duty to ensure that they adhere to speed restrictions as they do save lives and minimise the extent of injuries caused.
Implementing traffic calming measures like speed bumps, chicanes, and roundabouts can reduce vehicle speed, making the environment safer for pedestrians, particularly children.
Fitting a Black Box to Your Teenager’s Car
A black box can encourage your drivers to drive safely and can reduce their insurance premiums significantly.
3. Parental and Community Involvement
Supervised Travel
Young children in particular should be supervised by an adult when near or crossing roads. Holding your youngsters hand and ensuring they stay close can prevent most collisions.
Walking Groups
Organized walk to school programmes and walking groups where children walk to and from school in groups under adult supervision can really enhance safety and create a community-focused approach to child safety. Contact your school to find out if any of these initiatives exist and if not, why not start one with fellow parents?
Community Watch Programs
Neighbourhood watch programmes, whilst less popular than in earlier times due to hectic lifestyles can play a crucial role in monitoring road safety near schools and residential areas.
Volunteers can help guide children at crossings and report any unsafe conditions to authorities.
Advocacy for Safety Measures
Parents and community members should always advocate for improved road safety measures with local authorities. If something is not right, help change it. Campaigning for safer infrastructure, better signage, and stricter enforcement of traffic laws can make a significant difference.
4. Technological Aids
Reflective Clothing and Accessories
Children with reflective clothing, backpacks, and accessories can enhance their visibility to drivers, especially during low-light conditions. Consider when purchasing items whether there are any clothing or accessories on the market that can enhance your child’s visibility to traffic.
Mobile Apps and Gadgets
Whilst mobile phones do not always enhance children’s wellbeing and can often distract them whilst walking near busy road, particularly older children, they can provide some help with child safety. Remind children not to use their phones when walking to school and encourage them not to wear earphones that may prevent them from hearing the sound of vehicles. There are also several mobile apps and wearable gadgets designed to enhance child safety which can provide location tracking, emergency alerts, and even guide children on safe routes.
Drivers should of course remind themselves that it is illegal to use a mobile phone whilst driving and the lack of concentration and collisions that can be caused as a result.
5. Legislation and Enforcement
Strict Enforcement of Speed Limits and Penalties for Traffic and Speed Violations
Authorities have a duty where possible to strictly enforce speed limits, especially in school zones and residential areas. Speed cameras and regular patrolling can deter speeding and enhance safety.
Public Awareness Campaigns
Governments and non-profit organisations should run regular public awareness campaigns highlighting the importance of road safety for children. With the rise of social media, these campaigns can be disseminated through various media channels and have a wide reach.
We all have the shared responsibility of keeping children safe by the roadside. This requires the concerted effort of parents, schools, the community, and the government.
Through education, improved infrastructure, vigilant supervision, and effective use of technology, we can create a safer environment for children, significantly reducing the risk of road-related injuries and deaths.
By fostering a culture of safety and awareness, we protect our most vulnerable to ensure their safe passage through their roads, pavements and streets.
Research conducted by Brake show that in 2021, 512 children aged seven or younger were killed or seriously injured on British roads which equates to one child every 17 hours, which is a tragic statistic.
If you are a family that has been affected by a road collision, we can offer expertise and a safe and empathetic pair of hands in dealing with a claim on your behalf.
Unfortunately, despite best efforts, collisions will continue to happen.
Call What’s My Claim Worth expert team on freephone 01244 568 535 to see how we can help recover the damages your child deserves if they have suffered injuries as a result of a careless or reckless driver.
Examples of children and families we have helped:
- A 13-year-old girl who suffered a head injury and scarring who was in a hurry to catch public transport and ran across the road at a crossing without waiting for the green man.
- A teenager who suffered significant spinal fractures resulting in surgery and brain injury whilst travelling as a passenger in her friends speeding car that collided head on with another vehicle.
- Parents of teenager who was tragically killed because of a dangerous driver.