CHILD ACCIDENTS en route TO AND FROM SCHOOL
CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSIONS
IN SUPPORT OF ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE
5.1 There is some support for the anecdotal evidence put forward to suggest that a significant proportion of child pedestrian casualties may occur just before or just after a child has boarded or alighted from a bus.
5.2 The number, however, is relatively small - ranging from 2% of all pedestrian casualties for the 5-11 age group to 4% for 12-15 year olds - but - as indicated above - there is a margin of doubt in the findings that implies a larger proportion (not a smaller proportion) of casualties may be associated with bus trips.
5.3 Although this is a small group in proportional terms, four children were killed and thirty-five were seriously injured. The number of slight casualties amounted to 111 (one hundred and eleven). This is clearly a road safety problem that needs to be addressed.
KEY ISSUES
5.4 The afternoon journey from school accounts for the majority of casualties. Action to cut these casualties is likely to prove to be difficult. Such casualties will be injured in a dispersed set of accidents - rather than close to school - where traffic management initiatives may not be cost justified and are unlikely to have much palliative effect.
5.5 The high number of casualties in the 11-14 year old age group - particularly involving boys - also presents it own problems in terms of remedial action. This age group is a difficult one in which to reform attitudes and this adds emphasis to the justification for the existing work in primary schools in providing children with road safety skills for life.
5.6 A smaller but significant proportion of children are injured having alighted from a contract school bus. This is an area where there may be justification in local authorities looking at their existing specifications for contract services with a view to reducing the need for children to cross a busy road. This may require route audits where the needs of individual groups of passengers are considered. These audits may result in the adjustment of routes to minimise the need to cross busy roads to board or after alighting from a bus. In some local authorities where supported services effectively act as school buses, similar audits could be undertaken.
5.7 The coding of STATS19 Field 3.13 (School Pupil Casualty) is not fully reliable and the value of maintaining this field as part of the STATS19 dataset may be an issue for consideration at a national level. Improvements to the STATS19 collection procedures could include a greater focus on the presence of buses at accident scenes. This could be achieved in a number of ways including:
- Amending STATS19 Field 3.11 to include bus codes
- Making it mandatory in the STATS19 process to include a vehicle record for all parked vehicles identified in Field 3.11.
5.8 The cost of such improvements would have to be set against the benefits from doing so. This paper offers no opinion on a balance of such costs and benefits.