Secondary school pupils debate road safety with MP
A group of secondary school pupils will debate road safety with their MP today (Thursday 20 June) as figures reveal a child is killed or injured on their city’s roads every week.
The four boys from Murray Park Community School, in Mickleover, Derby, will interview North Derby MP Chris Williamson as part of a new campaign in partnership with road safety charity Brake and Toyota Manufacturing UK Charitable Trust.
This is for the new Youth for Brake project, which helps 11-16 year olds run local road safety and sustainable transport campaigns in their community. Other secondary schools across Derby and Flintshire are being encouraged to sign up and run their own Youth for Brake projects from September.
Latest Department for Transport (DfT) figures show that 67 children were killed or injured on roads in Derby in 2017. That’s an average of more than one child dying or suffering injuries as a result of a road crash every single week. In neighbouring Derbyshire the figure was nearly double, with 124 child road casualties in 2017, and there was a total of 1,044 children killed or injured on roads across the East Midlands.
The Youth for Brake project aims to give secondary school pupils the knowledge, skills and confidence to lead a campaign and engage with their peers about road safety and the dangers posed by transport. With support from Brake and Toyota Manufacturing UK, the youngsters set up a committee, choose a road safety or sustainable travel topic, run their own campaign and then evaluate their successes.
At Murray Park Community School year nine pupils Arjun Binning, 14, Archie Couchman, 13, Tom Mills, 13, and George Ogan, 14, have set up their Youth for Brake committee and will meet with Derby North MP Chris Williamson today (20 June) to discuss local road safety issues. The group has already run a pupil survey, taken videos of nearby road safety issues, delivered an assembly to 250 children at St Peters Primary School, written to the Prime Minister and started their own Twitter account. They want to raise awareness about the importance of road safety in Derby and try and make the road outside their school safer.
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