Teaching children pedestrian road safety skills is an important part of growing up and becoming independent, safer road users.

As parents and carers, it is our duty to ensure the safety of all children, using road safety as a life skill.

It is not possible for Kent Count Council to deliver practical pedestrian sessions in person to each and every child in the county, but with the below videos and resources, we can help everyone to become a safer pedestrian in a fun and safe way.

In the below videos and information sheets, you can find all the details you need to help you to teach your children key pedestrian road safety skills.

The Basics

Just like us grown-ups learning to drive a car, children need good pedestrian experiences, where they can gain real world experiences with traffic environments.  Children are vulnerable road users who need close parental guidance dealing with traffic environments.

Here are some key things to remember:

• Children are smaller and sometimes harder for drivers to see.
• Children cannot judge speed, distance or the origin of sound until they are around ten years old. Don’t forget, this is different for every child, with some developing later.
• Developing abstract ideas, such as road safety, can be hard to for children to grasp.
• They are unable to identify safer places to cross the road on their own.
• They do not realise that it is unsafe to cross near obstacles.
• Children are easily distracted and usually can only focus on one thing at a time.
• Children are impulsive, they may make decisions to cross roads without taking the time to think or to understand about whether it is safe or not.
• Children believe that cars can stop instantly.

As a parent/carer, you have a key role in educating your child about the importance of road safety. Children learn by doing and benefit from real world experiences.  You have the perfect opportunity to educate your child whilst making your journeys as pedestrians, use this time to discuss road safety as part of your journey and why your choices are important. These experiences are the building blocks to helping your child understand road safety and how it helps to keep them safe.

It is important to teach children the Road Safety/Green Cross Code, you can find information on what we teach children in Road Safety Club here.