Just a Journey? > Parents > Road safety statistics

Worldwide, an estimated 1.3 million people are killed in road crashes each year and over 50 million people are injured.
These are alarming statistics and an even more frightening statistic is concealed within them – that nearly three young people die each day in crashes.

In the UK the Government has set targets for the reduction of casualties by the year 2010:
40% reduction of those killed or seriously injured
10% reduction of slight casualties
Further target for children:
50% reduction in the number of children killed or
seriously injured.

In 2007 alone there were 23,807 children between the ages of 0 and 15 killed or seriously injured on UK roads:
121 of these were fatal
2,969 of these were serious
and 20,717 of these were of slight severity.

These are worrying statistics which could result from any of the following:
most children under 9 years old are unable to judge how fast vehicles are going or how far away they are
the risk of a child pedestrian being involved in a road accident rises when they start school and then rises again when children start secondary school
nearly a fifth of child road accidents occur on children's journeys to school
68% of children aged 0 to 11 killed or seriously injured in 2007 were on foot at the time.