We are taking part in the UK’s biggest road safety event, Road Safety Week (21-27 November), coordinated by Brake, the road safety charity. This year, thousands of organisations, schools and community groups are backing the Make the Brake Pledge campaign, helping to spread awareness about six simple things to save lives and the planet.

As part of the campaign, We will be learning about road safety awareness in this weeks Beaver meeting.

The Road Safety Week 2016 theme, Make the Brake Pledge, is about people all over the country understanding six key things they can do to protect themselves and the people around them, and reduce emissions and pollution from vehicles. The six Brake Pledge points are: Slow, Sober, Secure, Silent, Sharp and Sustainable.

Every day, five people are killed and more than 60 people are seriously injured on UK roads [1][2]. There are an estimated further 29,000 deaths from particulate matter pollution in the UK [3], 5,000 of which are attributable to road transport [4], and an additional 23,500 deaths from NO2 [5]. Brake is asking everyone to help end this needless suffering by spreading the word in Road Safety Week about the life-saving importance of the Pledge.

To mark the start of Road Safety Week, Brake will be releasing the results of research revealing what people perceive to be the biggest threats on Britain’s roads, and what dangerous habits they admit to having themselves. Find out more in the Road Safety Week newsroom from Monday 21 November, or email news@brake.org.uk to request an embargoed press release for your region the week before.

 Road Safety Week

Road Safety Week is the UK’s flagship event to promote safer road use, coordinated annually by the charity Brake and involving thousands of schools, communities and organisations across the country. Road Safety Week 2016 takes place 21-27 November, with support from the Department for Transport and sponsors Specsavers and Aviva.

 End notes

[1] Reported road casualties in Great Britain: main results 2015, Department for Transport, 2016

[2] Police recorded injury road traffic collision statistics: 2015 key statistics report, Police Service of Northern Ireland, 2016

[3] Estimating Local Mortality Burdens associated with Particulate Air Pollution, Public Health England

[4] Public Health Impacts of Combustion Emissions in the United Kingdom, MIT

[5] Tackling nitrogen dioxide in our towns and cities, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs