Facts about road accidents and children

18 June 2013

The AXA RoadSafe ‘Facts about road accidents and children’ report released on 18th June marks 10 years since the publication of the AA Motoring Trust report into child accident rates, which hasn’t been replicated until today. In that time, 32,849 children have been killed or seriously injured on Britain’s roads.
 
The new report aims to identify ways to improve the road safety standards for children in the UK rather than simply to highlight issues.

Committed to safety on the road, AXA car insurance has joined forces with RoadSafe, Road Safety GB, Road Safety Analysis, The Good Schools Guide and Colas to improve the road safety standards for children in the UK.

The report which is available here highlights that:
 
• In the past 5 years there has been a proportionate rise in child deaths and injuries among pedestrians - 66% of all accidents in 2011, compared to 61% in 2006
• Death and serious injury rates for under-5 year olds is at the highest rate for 10 years – and continuing to rise
• Pedestrian casualties for under 8 year old girls is now at its highest rate since 2005
• Average age of mobile phone ownership amongst children now 11 years old – the age when children are most at risk of road accidents as pedestrians
• More than 2,400 children under the age of 16 were killed or seriously injured on Britain’s roads in 2011

The purpose of this new report is to arm parents and communities with the information they need to help reduce child road accidents and aim to bring the number of casualties down to 1,500 by 2020 – a 40 per cent reduction on 2011. 

In addition to the report,  AXA car insurance with its partners Brake UK, Road Safety GB, Road Safety Analysis (MAST), RoadSafe, The Good Schools Guide and road maintenance experts Colas, are in the process of developing the first comprehensive schools road safety index to launch in Autumn 2013.

With the aim to analyse all 30,000 plus local school areas across the country, the index will consider key facts such as speed limits, road safety measures including speed bumps, as well as crossings and road markings while also incorporating key road density information, crash rates, crash types and more.

To do this, AXA car insurance is working with renowned industry experts and ex-government advisors Road Safety Analysis (previously MAST) to establish a true ‘safety factor’ for each school location. Although most of the data will be provided by Road Safety Analysis, hundreds of volunteers from across the UK have helped to assess local school areas as part of the cause to make local areas even safer for children.