Children demand road safety as 42 kids are killed or hurt on North West roads every week

5,000 primary school children across the North West will take to the streets around their school today 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.

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.

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).

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.

Schools and nurseries from the region are now 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.

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.”

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