More than 90,000 children are today learning vital road safety messages, as part of a nationwide initiative co-ordinated by Brake.
Beep Beep! Days focus on three simple things to help young children be safe near roads – holding hands with a grown up when walking, crossing roads at safe places and always using a child seat when travelling by car.
Participating schools, nurseries and childminders receive an action pack of resources that includes activities to help children learn about road safety, plus important messages to send home to parents and carers, all illustrated with characters from Aardman’s popular children’s TV programme Timmy Time.
This year, nearly 1,500 schools, nurseries and childminders are taking part, the equivalent of 90,000 2-7 year-olds.
Ross Moorlock, Chief Executive Officer at Brake, said: “We’re delighted to see almost 1,500 schools, nurseries and childminders take part in a Beep Beep! Day this year.
“As grown ups, we must always take responsibility for keeping children safe on our roads, but this is a great opportunity to start conversations about road danger and help them understand why road safety is so important.”
To coincide with this year’s Beep Beep! Day, Brake has highlighted the true extent of child casualties on the nation’s roads.
Latest official figures show that 3,355 children aged 7 years and under were killed or injured on roads in Britain in 2023 – that includes 17 children who died and 574 who suffered serious injuries.
The data also shows that in 2023, 1,869 children aged 0–7 years were killed or injured while travelling by car, 1,157 while walking and 119 while cycling on roads in Britain.
Over the same period in 2023, the charity’s National Road Victim Service provided specialist emotional and practical support to more than 2,000 families across the UK, helping them cope with their grief and navigate the complex procedures that often follow a road crash.
At any point in time, more than 700 road victim families are receiving support from Brake, including parents, grandparents, siblings, friends and people who have witnessed a traumatic incident.
Many of the families supported have been involved in multi-fatality crashes, and around 7% of support cases involve the death of a child.
Ross Moorlock added: “We see, every day, the devastating effects of road crashes on families, through the work of our National Road Victim Service, which this month is supporting 60 families following the death of a child in a road crash.
“It’s heartbreaking to hear that nine young children are harmed on our roads every single day, and shocking that the number of children who have been killed or seriously injured in road crashes has risen in recent years.
“At Brake, we are doing everything we can to prevent road death and injury, and we will continue to campaign for the solutions that we know will make our journeys safer, whoever we are and however we travel. We call on the Government to issue its long-awaited Road Safety Strategy with urgency, with evidence-based measures to end road death and injury.”
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