A Motorcycle Safety and Transport Policy Framework
Summary
Road Safety is arguably the most important life skill. It is relevant to absolutely every single person and given this should be a compulsory topic at school for all children.
Whilst we understand that curriculum time is tight and there are a lot of subjects to fit in, it is crucial that people learn about road safety from a young age. Teaching all young people to use our roads safely will help reduce casualties for all transport modes, our children will all use the roads in one form or another from their first years right through to old age. Understanding the rules of the road and appropriate hazard awareness training from an early age will benefit everyone, from pedestrians to HGV drivers but particularly vulnerable road users.
Description
There are some people who decide to never get a licence and therefore use the road in a completely untested capacity. In the Reported Road Casualties Great Britain 2015 Annual Report, the Contributory Factors in Reported Accidents showed that for pedestrians, of the 264 fatal accidents, 157 were caused by the pedestrian failing to look properly and another 86 pedestrians failed to judge the vehicle’s path or speed.
This demonstrates why it is absolutely crucial to instil road safety education into the national curriculum and not wait until people choose to use a licenced form of transport on the road.
The existing national curriculum already offers plenty of opportunities to introduce road safety. There is no need to introduce a completely new subject. There is cross over between existing subjects and road safety.
That National Curriculum
The National Curriculum is broken up into 4 Key Stages. Within each Key Stage there are compulsory subjects and we see it as essential that Road Safety Education is introduced in each of these.
Next Steps
- Identify stakeholders and hold meetings/planning sessions
- Organise a conference to present plans
- Introduce this concept to the Department for Education
- Pre-School – given that in 2015, there were 651 casualties under 4 years old either on a pedestrian crossing, within 50 metres of a crossing and elsewhere4, it is crucial that we also look to work with nurseries and pre-school establishments to ensure that this valuable life lesson is started as soon as possible
- Liaise with Road Safety Officers – as suggested above, road safety education can be integrated into existing curriculum subjects. Outside support should be utilised where possible – there are a range of fantastic resources that can offer great support. Road Safety Officers can offer support and there is an abundance of road safety resources online which can be adapted to match the curriculum requirements
Progress
UPDATE – Action 1 Introduce Compulsory Road Safety Education Within the School Curriculum, Resulting in a Theory Test Qualification
We have been busy moving this action forward. Initial stakeholder groups have been identified to discuss proposals and meetings will take place in 2016/2017. We have been working in detail with Road Safety GB on this action. A governmental influencers meeting has taken place where we discussed the proposals for road safety education within schools. Following on from the meeting, it is our aim is to host a conference with educational professionals in Spring 2017 to present a proposal for the introduction of road safety education into the National Curriculum. Once we have sought the opinions of the stakeholders we will be seeking meetings with the Department for Education to look at introducing road safety into the compulsory curriculum.
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4 Reported Road Casualties Great Britain 2015, table RAS3026, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-in-great-britain-main-results-2015