Brake is calling for default 20mph speed limits to be adopted around all schools in the UK, asking, “Why do we have to wait until a child is killed before we act?”

A crash at 30mph has twice the amount of kinetic energy as a crash at 20mph – reducing speed saves lives

New research published by the road safety charity reveals parents and carers say it’s not safe to walk their children to school every day because roads are too busy (36%) and cars go too fast (25%). Compounding this, nearly two-thirds (64%) of parents say their school doesn’t have 20mph speed limits on all surrounding roads.

Latest official figures show that 11,580 children aged 15 or under were killed or injured on roads in the UK in 2021. A five-year average meanwhile gives a figure of 13,503. This means that, on average, 37 children die or suffer injuries as a result of road crashes every single day. Provisional figures for 2022 show that 48 children died on roads in the UK, or one child almost every week.

More than 100,000 children (aged 4-11) from more than 700 schools and nurseries are taking part in Brake’s Kids Walk today (14 June 2023), calling for their right to make safe and healthy journeys without fear or threat from traffic.

Lucy Straker, campaigns manager at Brake, said: “As schools up and down the country take part in Brake’s Kids Walk to shout out for safe places to walk, with slow traffic, we’re calling for roads around every school to have 20mph speed limits – and other measures to effectively reduce traffic speed – so children and their families can travel safely to and from school every day.”

She added: “We know that excess speed is a factor in about a quarter of fatal crashes, and the physics is pretty straightforward: the faster a vehicle is travelling, the harder it hits and the greater the impact. A crash at 30mph has twice the amount of kinetic energy as a crash at 20mph. Reducing speed saves lives.”

The Welsh government announced last year that it will make 20mph the default limit on all roads in residential or built-up areas from September 2023; a first for a UK nation. Meanwhile, Scotland has committed to making 20mph the norm across all councils by 2025.  According to the campaign group 20’s Plenty for Us, 28 million people in the UK (more than a third of the population) now live in areas where their local council has agreed to implement such a policy. A draft Department for Transport planning document seen by The Times earlier this year said a 20mph speed limit should be considered the standard for new and redesigned urban streets.