5,000 children to march outside schools in North West to highlight Road Safety

5,000 primary school children across the North West will take to the streets around their school on Wednesday 16 June to raise awareness of the 42 children who are killed or injured on the region’s roads every week.

The children, aged between 4 and 11, are among more than 50,000 across the UK who are taking part in Brake’s Kids Walk with Shaun the Sheep. The national project, run by road safety charity Brake in partnership with insurance company esure, sees Shaun and his flock help youngsters learn key road safety messages and call on their grown-ups to make roads safer, so more children can enjoy the health and planet-saving benefits of walking, scooting or cycling to school.

To coincide with the launch of the walk, Brake has highlighted the true extent of child casualties on the region's roads.

Latest Department for Transport (DfT) figures1 for 2019 show that, with 2,164 children losing their lives or being injured on the roads in the North West every year, the region is the third highest in the UK for child road casualties, (after the South East with 2,593 and London with 2,270).

The local authority with the highest child road casualty figures in the North West is Lancashire (excluding Blackburn and Blackpool), where 384 children were killed or injured in that year. Nonetheless, this represents a 24% drop from the figure in 2015 (504).

By contrast, the local authority of Stockport reported 38 child deaths or injuries on their roads in 2019. Trafford, Knowsley and Halton also all registered under 45 child road casualties each year, taken as an average from 2015 - 2019.

Across the region, in the main the numbers of children being killed or seriously injured shows a slow but steady decline. Cheshire East and Cheshire West & Chester have both managed to reduce their casualty figures by 40% and 37% respectively across the past five years, reporting 128 across the two local authorities in 2019 compared to 206 in 2015.

However, shocking figures from Salford buck this trend, with child road casualties increasing from 37 to 71 across the five-year period, a rise of 92%. The figures in many other local authorities remain largely static. The major conurbations of Liverpool (176 casualties in 2019) and Manchester (118 casualties in 2019, a decrease of 34% on the previous year) come second and fourth after Lancashire, with Cumbria the third-worst authority in the region for child road casualties (average of 165).

Schools and nurseries from the region are joining the nationwide campaign, calling for five key measures to enable children to make safe and healthy journeys: footpaths, cycle paths, safe places to cross, slow traffic and clean traffic.

Short, supervised walks are taking place on the 16th June at or around schools and nurseries. Children will walk in a crocodile formation and hold hands to highlight the importance of being able to walk without fear or threat from traffic.

Schools can also run special road-safety-themed assemblies, lessons and fun activities, using free resources from Brake and featuring Shaun the Sheep and his friends. Resources are available to any parent, carer or teacher to download for free at www.brake.org.uk/kidswalk . The event can also be used to fundraise for Brake, which supports families who have lost loved ones in road crashes.

Brake’s Kids Walk 2021 is sponsored by esure.

Aardman Animations have kindly lent their imagery of Shaun the Sheep and friends to support this campaign.

Scott Williams, head of programme delivery at Brake, said: “It’s every child’s right to be able to walk in their community without fear of traffic and pollution. Throughout the pandemic, families have taken to the streets on foot and by bike and we hope these activities will continue as restrictions lift and ordinary road traffic returns. It is vital that children are able to walk safely in the places where they live. Although numbers of children killed or injured in the North West shows positive signs of decline, every road death or injury is one too many and causes devastation for families, schools and communities. This year we hope to inspire as many children, schools and families as possible to call for safe and healthy journeys for children through our Brake’s Kids Walk event.”

David McMillan, CEO at esure Group added: “We are thrilled to have partnered with Brake to sponsor this year’s event as we believe in the importance of road safety for children everywhere. We want to be a force for good and make a real difference by focusing on better and safer driving. Brake’s Kids Walk is an important opportunity to raise awareness about road safety messages.”