We heard yesterday of a very near miss outside a local school where a child narrowly missed being run over. When children walk to school with their peers as they get older, the temptation to show off or be dared to do something can take over basic road sense – in this case mixed with the fact that the roads around the school aren’t gritted, it could have been a hideous outcome. Thankfully it wasn’t, but we thought we’d take the opportunity this week to look at how to teach road safety to your children.
Whether you remember the Tufty Club, the Green Cross Code Man (and yes, he used to be Darth Vader), or the “Stop, Look, Listen” campaign, it’s never too early to be teaching your children about road safety. Even from very early on, watching cars go past and commenting on their colour or whether they are driving ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ can be a great introduction to what happens on the roads – and as soon as children can identify red and green, teaching them only to cross when the green man is showing is an incredibly important skill.
The Government THINK campaign website offers educational guides for parents, teachers and pupils, split into sections for Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, plus very differently styled site for Secondary school pupils.
They’ve really covered all the key points so rather than try and summarise them here, do take a look and find out what suits your child.
If you’ve got a child with an insatiable appetite for statistics and wants proof that accidents do happen around where you live, the Local Road Safety Index was complied by Axa for the period 2008-2013 (we assume they’re still working on the 2014 stats). You can click on your local school and see the incidents over that period – although these are only the ones reported to insurers – it doesn’t count the near misses or the ones that parents weren’t told about by their children. The ROSPA statistics are produced on a yearly basis and although don’t specifically list those accidents involving children, certainly teach some lessons about careless driving and the importance of wearing your seatbelts – a really important discussion to have with your children if they are getting lifts with other people.
Children do find it incredibly difficult to judge the speed at which cars are travelling – as they get older, their spacial awareness increases but it’s still hard for them. Equally, our experience that comes as a driver and pedestrian gives us a bank of knowledge on which to draw – often knowing in our local area the points where driving skills leave a little to be desired. There are cars that we pass regularly who always speed and certainly, here in St Albans, there are areas where cars are parked so tightly along the roads that there is no option but to cross from between parked cars – and that really isn’t great.
Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service run their 365 Alive campaign which covers everything in really simple language for parents and children – well worth a read if you’re looking at how to teach road safety to your children, a group you volunteer with or your class.
