Manchester has the second highest number of road accidents involving children in the UK and the worst in the North West, a new study revealed on Friday.
The Local Road Safety Index also shows that Manchester see the fourth highest number of serious road collisions around schools, with only London, Liverpool and Nottingham seeing more.
The study released by insurers AXA is based on incidents within a 500 metre radius of schools and covers data collected between the six years from 2006 to 2011.
AXA say the study has been commissioned to: “Help parents better understand the risks associated with the roads around their local schools to keep their children safe.”
Road Safety Analysis director Dan Campsall said: “Translating this wealth of data into something that is meaningful for parents, teachers and community leaders has its challenges.
“However, it is important that these groups are able to understand the immediate road risks around their local schools if they are going to work effectively to secure safer communities for children in the future.
“The data can be used to support changes in local road safety education as well as the road environment, therefore helping to further safeguard pupils across the country.”
The index shows that there were 85,814 child casualties on British roads which, over the six year period equates to 1,190 incidents each month.
London accounts for 13% of the child casualties nationally and 22% of collisions overall.
Although they have been credited in AXA’s press release with being part of the study, Road Safety GB have moved to distance themselves from it stating they were “not part of the ‘coalition’ behind the project.”
Despite applauding the insurer’s efforts to produce this collection of information, Honor Byford, the vice chair Road Safety GB, believes they could have used their resources differently.
“The data referred to in this road safety index is already available to local authority road safety teams and can be called up with a few clicks of a mouse,” she said on their website.
She also believes that the data could have been more focused, stating: “The data relates to all collisions, most of which (83% in fact) will not have involved a child.
“For the tool to be really useful for schools and parents more detailed information about child casualties is required, such as the age of the child, time of the collision and whether it occurred during term time.”
When asked about these figures Road Safety Minister Stephen Hammond said: “Road deaths are at a record low and child casualties have fallen considerably in recent years but I am determined to make our roads even safer.
“That is why we are improving road safety education resources for schools, making it easier for councils to put in place 20mph zones on their roads and are increasing fixed penalties for offences such as driving while using a mobile phone from £60 to £100.
“By combining education, enforcement and engineering measures such as these we will continue to reduce deaths and injuries on our roads.”
For anybody further interested in the statistics for their own child’s school, click here.
Picture courtesy of Andrew Mason via Flickr, with thanks.
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