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Kids

1,092 children, 14 years and under, have died violently in motor vehicle crashes in Australia over the last ten years. If the average Australian motor vehicle crash rate remains unchanged, more than 1,000 children will die a similar tragic and unacceptable death over the next decade.

Furthermore, approximately 555 children are injured in vehicle crashes every year and over the next decade we can expect 5,500 more will be injured.

We are destroying our own precious future!

Get the Facts

General
Roads
Vehicles
Seniors
Kids
Cyclists
Pedestrians
Costs
Motorcycles

Consider the facts

Children aged 14 years and younger make up over 1 in 5 of the population or nearly 4 million of Australia’s population, equivalent to the population of Sydney.

In 2003, 106 children under the age of 14 years died in road crashes – over 6% of all road fatalities in Australia for the year. 48, or nearly one in two of these children were younger than five years of age.

Of the 106 children killed:
- 73 children, or nearly three out of every four died as vehicle passengers;
- 20 children, or one in five were killed as pedestrians; and
- 7 children, or one in twenty were killed riding bicycles.

What can be done?

Roads can be better designed to cater for children and their lack of experience with traffic. Many of the specific road treatments can include those described for seniors but also can include:

Safety islands at vulnerable pedestrian crossing points;
Improved roads to allow for safer bicycle riding and pedestrian crossings;
Better located crossings to maximise line-of-sight for oncoming vehicles and pedestrians;
Actively enforced speed restrictions at school pedestrian crossings;
Improved signage and lighting at all pedestrian crossings;
Improved intersection design;
Installation of ‘beeping’ and vibrating pedestrian signal devices;
Enhanced signage and pavement markings to indicate oncoming pedestrian crossings for drivers:
Greater use of speed and red light cameras at susceptible intersections;
Develop Safe-Routes-to-School Programs

You can help make a difference. Insist your local, state and federal politicians fix aging, congested roads, improve signage and lighting, to make travel safer for kids, for our parents, for our friends – for everyone.