Road Safety
Join the club!
Are we doing enough to prevent our children from being hurt on our roads?
Road crashes have become such a common, every day occurrence that they hardly make headlines anymore (unless someone famous is involved). We just carry on our everyday lives thinking it will never happen to us. But road crashes are the single largest cause of death and serious injury in the UK – and particularly to children. It could be your child next!
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The Government has set every local authority in the country a target to reduce the number of road casualties by 40 per cent by 2010 – with a 50 per cent reduction for child casualties. Throughout the country, every local authority has set in place a variety of strategies and programmes to work towards achieving these targets.
In London, Transport for London (TfL), has created a multi-staged approach to achieve these targets. Starting with the very young, and progressing through primary and secondary school levels, TfL’s programmes ensure all children have access to solid, well researched and engaging road safety education to help make a difference.
 Range of extension materials |
You may well remember hearing about the initial stage, The Children’s Traffic Club. The Children’s Traffic Club is a proven, successful road safety scheme to help parents teach basic road safety skills to three and four year olds.
All children in this age group should receive an invitation to join The Children’s Traffic Club on their third birthday, from their local Primary Care Trust. As soon as their parent or carer registers the child with The Children’s Traffic Club, they receive their first educational book pack, with an additional book sent out every three months. In London there are seven books in The Children’s Traffic Club series.
Janet Kirrage, TfL’s Road Education Safety Manager, saw the merits in furthering the reach of The Children’s Traffic Club in London and addressed the opportunity by providing extra resources to engage a range of professionals, including:
- The Children’s Traffic Club nursery and playgroups pack, distributed to every nursery throughout London. The pack contains height charts, alphabet and number charts, a story book, a song and story CD, activity sheets, stickers, board games, snap cards, hand puppets and dressing up boxes containing character costumes from The Children’s Traffic Club
- Road Safety Officers’ packs, exhibitions, displays and posters on road safety
- Road Safety packs for health practitioners and child minders.
 Members ‘core’ material |
A range of materials for Sure Start and Early Years establishments are also available – specifically designed to help those groups of parents in areas of social depravation or where English may be a second language to teach their children about road safety. The very latest addition to The Children’s Traffic Club is a lively musical and dance performance roadshow, on tour around all of the nurseries throughout London.
At the heart of The Children’s Traffic Club are balloon characters that represent the key road safety messages in a fun and engaging way, including ‘Sammy Seatbelt’ and ‘Handy Hold’. The roadshow brings these balloon characters to life and the costumed performers interact directly with the children with songs and games. Launched in September 2007, the roadshow has been to over 500 nurseries in London and bookings have already been made up until the end of 2008 with many nurseries clamouring for a repeat visit. All this and totally free in London!
The shows are pre-booked and nurseries receive pre-show packs that give information about the show, the space needed, posters and letters to parents, plus a range of photocopiable funsheets for the children which introduce the characters and their messages.
The half hour Children’s Traffic Club show is engaging and interactive, with stories, song and dance highlighting the key road safety messages:
- When out, hold hands with an adult
- Look for safe places to cross the road
- Stop, look and listen before crossing the road, and
- Always wear a seatbelt in the car Parents are encouraged to attend the performances and enrolment leaflets for The Children’s Traffic Club are available at the show.
 Balloon characters give children important road safety messages in a fun and engaging way |
The Children’s Traffic Club has been a great success, but some children are still missing out. Determined to ensure all parents and carers have access to the resources, Transport for London has added another tool. All nurseries in London have now been provided with Parent Welcome Packs to give to parents with each new nursery enrolment.
The pack contains information, leaflet, advice card and enrolment form for The Club. TfL’s next stage in their education strategy follows on from The Children’s Traffic Club and is aimed at children in their first schools years, four to seven year olds, and is called ‘The a-z of Traffic Tales’, again provided free to every primary school throughout London. This resource has been specifically developed with the busy teacher in mind, providing a route for road safety issues, primarily through literacy, while promoting key personal, social, health and emotional and citizenship skills.
This award winning resource consists of six ‘Big Books’, alphabet charts, and a boxed set of 26 individual reading books, for use in class and at home, full of facts and information for parents. There are teacher notes, with suggested activities and additional information, plus an exciting interactive DVD that can be used on personal computers and on interactive classroom whiteboards.
The DVD contains all of the stories and illustrations from the reading books; stories are read aloud by the computers, highlighting word by word as it reads. To cover all reading abilities, there are two levels to choose from to encourage those who are not strong readers. ‘The a-z of Traffic Tales’ is a fun and educational resource and after thorough evaluation has received huge acclaim from teachers across London. In November 2007, Transport for London launched its latest building block in the structured education strategy – ‘Just a Journey?’.
 The a-z of Traffic Tales big book resource |
This comprehensive multimedia resource has been developed for seven to eleven year olds. At this age, children are gradually given increased independence and responsibility and this resource tackles the main road safety messages through a range of scenarios, looking at not only the causes, but at choices and consequences as well. The scenarios present a range of everyday life events within the UK, reflecting the diversity in both social and economic terms as well as ethnic diversity.
The resource consists of a DVD with six filmed scenarios, a wide range of interactive games and quizzes, printable activity sheets and teachers’ notes, 26 printed scenarios, and over 400 worksheets covering the key curriculum areas of English, Maths, Science, History, Geography, ICT, Art and Design, PHSE and Citizenship.
 Just a Journey? box set |
These resources are provided free of charge to every nursery and primary school in London thanks to the Mayor of London’s strategy and determination to reduce the number of children killed or injured on the capital’s roads. Transport for London has already achieved the 2010 objective of a 50 per cent reduction in the number of children killed or seriously injured on London’s roads. A more stringent target has now been set to reduce child casualties by 60 per cent – the strictest target in the UK.
Remember, if you have a child aged three to four and live in London you can register them totally free for The Children’s Traffic Club by calling the number below. If your postal address falls outside London and your local authority is not supporting the scheme, find out how you can still register your child to receive The Children’s Traffic Club pack.
To find out more call 0870 010 4440.
Please visit the following websites for further information.
The Children’s Traffic Club:
www.trafficclub.org
The a-z of Traffic Tales:
www.a-zoftraffic.co.uk
Just a Journey:
www.justajourney.co.uk
