A child safety campaign to highlight how driver behaviour endangers children has been launched to coincide with Child Safety Month in South Africa.
The Safer Streets for Children campaign is a collaboration between Open Streets Cape Town, child safety advocacy organisation Childsafe and the Safely Home Calendar initiated by the Western Cape Government’s Department of Transport & Public Works.
“Our research shows that most of the children injured or killed on South African roads are passengers or pedestrians,” said Yolande Baker, Executive Director, Childsafe South Africa. “They are injured or killed as a direct result of reckless or negligent driving by drivers who drive too fast, who drive drunk or take risky decisions on the road. Changing driver behaviour will save the lives of children.”
In 2017, 1,300 children were killed on South African roads. In Cape Town alone, at least 50 child pedestrians were killed last year. This is according to research conducted by Childsafe under its UNICEF-backed Prevention of Road Injuries Impacting Children in South Africa (PRICSA) programme.
“The reality that at least 50 children die walking on the streets in Cape Town each year is an unacceptable reflection of a society that designs streets for cars and not people,” said Open Streets Co-founder. “There is an urgent need to redesign our streets so that drivers are forced to slow down and be more aware of the children and pedestrians around them.”
Coinciding with August’s Child Safety Month, the campaign launched with an art installation in Cape Town featuring 50 silhouettes to represent each child pedestrian killed on the roads in 2017.
