Child pedestrian casualties and inequality

As football commentators like to put it, it was déjà vu all over again with The Guardian's recent article ‘Pedestrian road deaths linked to deprivation', a headline not dissimilar to the 2002 article entitled ‘Road death risk higher for deprived children'. Has anything changed?

Well, one thing has changed. This time, the fact that children in more deprived areas are much more likely to be child pedestrian casualties comes from figures released by the Department for Transport, instead of from the 2002 ippr and Imperial College report.

Cadence's Karl Hallam worked on 'Streets Ahead - Safe and liveable streets for children' and thinks the fact that the DfT are collecting these figures is an improvement but, six years on, the reality is that the inequality still exists. And that is depressing.

Whether this means the £17m fund that came about (partly due to the ippr report) has not worked, or that £17m was and is nowhere near enough money and local authorities' safety schemes take years and years to come about, is not clear.

Road safety statistics are only one element of neighbourhood liveability but, if they are not going in the right direction, it makes all the other bits seem rather secondary.

your comments

grahame perkins
Posts: 1

Child Road Casualties
Reply #1 on : Sun April 04, 2010, 06:40:01

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When will it sink in that it's not just kids in deprived areas who suffer from traffic ? There is a greater proportion of younger kids in those areas who are out in the streets. But in areas where the kids are kept in by careful parents there are other consequences some of them long term. The trouble with this sort of reporting and research is that it can lead to focusing spending in certain areas only when the truth is it's an overall problem - too much priority on the convenience of the motorist and not enough consideration for the health of neighbourhoods generally. This should also be a worry in middle class areas.

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