Traffic is one of the biggest causes of death and maiming of children. It’s also one of the ways that children are most likely to be suddenly and violently bereaved; losing a brother, sister, parent or other close relative.

Statistics show us that drivers who drive above speed limits, or too fast for the road and the people using it, are one of the biggest causes of deaths and injuries of kids. Slowing down is the single most important thing that drivers can do in towns, villages, and around schools. The slower we drive, the more chance we have to react to the unexpected.

This Road Safety Week, Brake is giving children a voice. We’re asking them how speed affects their lives; at home, school and play. We’re talking to kids in communities that are campaigning for safety measures on their roads and asking what they’d like to see change. We know that children are often scared of traffic in their communities and describe traffic as fast and coming out of nowhere. We know that children prefer to walk or cycle rather than use cars. We know that children are small, vulnerable, and make mistakes, and can so easily die.

Children’s overwhelming message in Road Safety Week is a simple one: if we want to improve the safety and quality of life of kids using roads in our communities, we need to SLOW DOWN.

What do children say about fast traffic and how it blights their lives?
For RSW10, Brake is surveying children about traffic speeds, and we’ll release the results in Road Safety Week in November. When we last surveyed children, for RSW08, we got shocking results. Six in ten children (60%) said they thought the roads around their homes were dangerous, and half of children (50%) said they were scared all or some of the time in cars by the driver driving too fast. One in 20 children (5%) said they had been hit and a third (32%) said they had nearly been hit on foot while walking without their parents. Out of the children who cycle on roads, one in 17 (6%) said they had been hit and almost four in ten (37%) said they had been nearly hit while cycling without their parents. Read the full results from Brake’s 2008 Road Safety Week survey here.

Advice for drivers on slowing down
Drivers say they don’t notice their speed creeping up, feel pressured by other drivers to go faster, are in a rush, or think they can ‘handle it’. If you drive, always watch your speedo as well as the road, constantly thinking that a child may run out, and keep your speed down. Driving too fast doesn’t just mean breaking the speed limit. It also means driving too fast for the conditions. 20mph or lower is the appropriate speed for towns, villages and around schools, and much slower when children are about, for example around school gates at the start or end of the school day. What feels slow inside your vehicle can still be a killing speed for a child.

The importance of slowing down in towns, villages and around schools is evident when we look at stopping distances. According to the Highway Code, a vehicle travelling at 40mph has a stopping distance three times as long as a vehicle travelling at 20mph. At 20mph it takes a car 3 average car lengths (12m) to stop; at 30mph it takes six average car lengths (23m) to stop; while at 40mph it takes nine average car lengths (36m) to stop.

Increased stopping distances mean that if a child impulsively steps out in front of you when you are travelling at higher speeds you are much more likely to hit them; and the impact is likely to be at a higher speed.

There is no safe speed at which you can hit someone on foot. A car is a one tonne chunk of metal that can cause death or serious injury at any speed. However, by driving slowly in communities we stand a much greater chance of stopping in time. As a driver’s speed rises, their stopping distances rise much quicker; stopping distances treble between 20mph and 40mph.

• A car driven at 20mph or lower (the maximum speed limit recommended by Brake for towns and villages) can stop in 12 metres (about three car lengths) or less, giving the driver a good chance to brake and stop in time if a child runs out ahead.

• A car driven at 30mph would still be travelling at about 27mph at the 12 metre marker, and would take nearly double this distance (23 metres) to stop (about six car lengths). A child hit at 27mph is likely to suffer serious injury such as paralysis or brain injury, or die; this is the equivalent of a child falling backwards out the window of a three storey house (a drop of about 7.3m).

In the UK, someone is killed by a driver who is speeding or travelling too fast for conditions every 14 hours. Police identified speeding or travelling too fast for conditions as a contributory factor to 622 road deaths in 2008: that's almost two deaths a day, 12 a week, 52 a month. 

Read Brake’s advice on driving slowly and safely, then make a commitment to do just that, by signing our Pledge to Drive Safely. You can also go to urban slow down campaigns and rural slow down campaigns from the UK’s Department for Transport

Facts on speeding in Britain
Speeding is commonplace. Although numbers of drivers who speed has dropped on British roads, nearly half (49%) of cars and over half (53%) of motorbikes are still breaking the limit on British 30mph roads, finds the UK Department for Transport.

Men are more likely to speed than women: one in 3 male drivers admit driving 35mph or faster in 30mph zones every day or several times a week, compared with one in 7 female drivers, finds this survey by Brake and Green Flag.

Although drivers seem aware of the effects of speed on crash rates and severity, 17% of drivers say they enjoy driving fast and find it difficult to keep to limits and only 13% say they are fully compliant with speed limits, finds this report by the UK Department for Transport.

Young drivers, drivers who are angry and drivers in a hurry (often for work reasons) are more likely to speed according to the Department for Transport. Young drivers are particularly likely to risk speeding and underestimate the risk, as well as not spot hazards early enough. Exceeding the speed limit was a factor in 41% of all crashes in which males aged 16–25 were killed in Britain in 2008, finds the Department for Transport Computer games, TV shows and Hollywood films encourage a dangerous culture of speeding says this report by the Co-operative Insurance.

Recent research on 20mph limits, speed cameras and other effective measures to stop fast driving
Surf the links to the below reports for evidence that 20mph zones are effective measures for reducing road injuries and deaths (by about 41%); speed cameras in Thames Valley have reduced injury collisions by 38%; and measures recommended by the UK Parliament’s Transport Select Committee to reduce speed, including the use of speed cameras, 20 miles per hour zones and road humps. We can also see that the UK has made less progress than many other European countries in reducing child deaths on roads in recent years - it’s time for action!

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine report
Thames Valley report
Parliamentary public accounts committee report
European Transport Safety Council report

Guidance from the NHS on preventing road injuries of under-15s is due to be published in a NICE guideline in November 2010.