Average of 158 child casualties on North Yorkshire roads each year
Yorkshire and the Humber has the fourth highest number of child road casualty incidents in the country
The true extent of child casualties on North Yorkshire's roads has been revealed with over 150 incidents on average each year.
It's as hundreds of children across the region are talking part in a road safety walk to raise awareness.
1,750 Yorkshire and the Humber schoolchildren will march for safer roads as 36 children from the region are killed or injured every week.
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, cycling and scooting to school.
Lauren Doherty BEM, from Knaresborough**,** was aged 20 when she was hit by a van in 2008.
She suffered life-changing injuries in the accident, and has now taught thousands about road safety.
She said: "At first I thought that my life was never going to be the same again and I kind of felt a little helpless.
"I was told that I wouldn't be able to walk again and that I wouldn't be able to breathe without a ventilator.
"It took me quite a while to get my head around the fact that I wouldn't be able to do a lot of things for myself. I could be really miserable for the rest of my life and I could just be at home and not be able to do anything for myself but I thought instead I could just live my life a little bit differently.
"From the point of my accident, I had always said that I wanted to go and speak to children about road safety, to make sure nobody else had to go through what me and my family were going through."
The figures for North Yorkshire (excluding York) show a decrease of 56% across the five-year period, from 222 in 2015 to 97 in 2019. However, other local authorities in Yorkshire and the Humber have not followed suit.