Road safety is a great subject to engage children with. It’s a subject even the youngest children know something about because everyone uses roads and road danger impacts on everyone. On average, six children are killed or seriously injured on roads in Britain every single day, that’s equivalent to a whole classroom of children every single week!
At Brake, the road safety charity, we believe everyone has the right to safe and healthy mobility and we’re working to stop road deaths and injuries, make our communities safer and greener, and improve support for people affected by road crashes.
For very young children, knowing the importance of holding a grown up’s hand when walking near roads, or waiting for the green man before crossing the road, can make a huge difference to their safety. That’s why we run Beep Beep! Days with Timmy Time for early years educators, to give them the tools they need to share important messages about road safety with young children aged 2–7.
Beep Beep! Days give schools, nurseries, pre-schools and childminders a great opportunity to make a difference and save little lives. By taking part in a fun, road-safety-themed day, children gain an understanding of the dangers of traffic and ways to stay safer near roads from an early age, with help from Timmy and his friends, and this helps ensure that road safety is well engrained for later years when they start to travel more independently.
Children are also fabulous advocates for road safety and Beep Beep! Days equip them to use ‘pester power’ to take key messages about road safety home to the grown-ups who care for them and call on those grown-ups to help keep them safe near roads.
Brake has been running Beep Beep! Days since 2004, with the support of Churchill Insurance. Every year, thousands of early years educators sign up to take part, engaging more than 315,000 children (in 2018) in road safety activities.
Everyone who registers for a Beep Beep! Day can access a free online action pack full of ideas and activities to teach children about safe and unsafe behaviours near roads, and what grown-ups can do to help keep them safe. A low-cost bumper pack offers additional printed resources to enable educators to deliver a session with reusable, laminated resources.
For more information and to get involved with our next Beep Beep! Day on Wednesday 20 November, during UK Road Safety Week, visit brakezebras.org/beep or call the team on 01484 550061. We look forward to working with more and more schools, nurseries, pre-schools and childminders to help save little lives and achieve our vision of a world where everyone has access to safe and healthy mobility.
