Taking road safety into schools and colleges in Road Safety Week
19 November 2012
It's Road Safety Week (19-25 November) and Hampshire County Council is putting the focus on its work with young people across the county to highlight the importance of good road safety behaviour, helping them to stay safe and avoid being involved in road accidents.
Despite a gradual decline in the number of people killed or seriously injured on Hampshire's roads over the last three years, between 2007 and 2011 there was a total of 773 casualties involving pedestrians or cyclists aged 11 to 16 years of age.
Several schools and colleges are involved in special events that promote safety awareness among students.
Through an award-winning educational theatre performance 'The Decision', 11 to 13 year old pupils will watch a courtroom scenario, taking them through events that lead to a young boy being killed in a road accident. After the performance, students are asked to act as jury and consider the circumstances of the accident to reach a verdict on whether the driver was guilty. The schools taking part are:
- Costello Technology College, Basingstoke;
- Thornden School and Toynbee School in Eastleigh;
- Oaklands Catholic School and Sixth Form College, Purbrook;
- Swanmore College of Technology and Brune Park Community College, Gosport.
At Farnborough Technology College, the County Council will be leading 'Young Driver' presentations. Targeted at young drivers and passengers, they feature hard-hitting videos and images of accidents in Hampshire, with speakers recounting their stories. This enables students to learn, and appreciate, the main factors behind accidents involving novice drivers and explore techniques they can adopt as young drivers to stay safe.
Many of the county's 260 Junior Road Safety Officers (pupils aged ten and eleven) in primary schools, including Harrison Primary School, Fareham and Hook Junior School, Basingstoke, are borrowing road safety materials from the County Council to run their own individually tailored Road Safety Week events for their peers.
The County Council is also offering a variety of resources for childminders to borrow so that pre-school children can also be taught early lessons in road safety. In the Ringwood area, two childminders, Kim Cable and Lisa Inckle, worked with children in this way during half term, and used equipment from 'Brake' (the road safety charity) to teach children the basic 'Stop, Look and Listen' lessons. Childminders who would like to arrange a loan of equipment should email road.safety@hants.gov.uk or call 01962 846100.
Councillor Mel Kendal, Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Environment and Transport at Hampshire County Council commented:
"Roads are the arteries that keep Hampshire and its economy moving but it is extremely important that people can travel around safely as they go about their day-to-day business, which is why road safety is one of our priorities. It is encouraging to see that, based on a three year average, there has been a gradual decline in the number of people killed or seriously injured on Hampshire's roads. Nonetheless, statistics show that between 2007 and 2011 there was a total of 773 casualties involving pedestrians or cyclists aged 11 to 16 years of age.
"I fully support Road Safety Week but road safety awareness is not a one-off, annual event for us and we work very hard throughout the year to help reduce the number of accidents on our roads and prevent serious injury or, worse, fatalities. We actively promote road safety on many levels and work closely with the police and other partner organisations to do this"
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