Lifewise Centre hosts Project Edward Event to promote road safety for school pupils

The annual safety campaign aims to stamp out all tragedies, with Edward standing for “every day without a road death” — there were 36 people killed on South Yorkshire’s roads in 2021, with another 660 seriously injured.

Under-16s accounted for about one in six of the injuries.

Lifewise runs the Crucial Crew project, in which youngsters take part in real-life scenarios around personal safety.

Margaret Lawson, community safety manager, said: “We are really proud of the interventions we run here and the feedback we get from schools is always very positive.

“Our interactive road safety scenario is aimed at pupils who are preparing to travel more independently to secondary school and looks at decision making as well as hazard awareness.

“We welcome the Project Edward team and are grateful to be able to show the rest of the UK the work that we are doing to help keep our young people safe.”

Tom Finnegan-Smith, who chairs the South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership, said: “Our partners share Project Edward’s long-term objective of a road traffic system free from death and serious injury.

“We know that it is ambitious and will take a lot of hard work, but Vision Zero is the only acceptable target.

“Everyone deserves safe roads, and it is up to each and every one of us, whether we are engineers, educators, road users or enforcers, to play our part in preventing collisions.

“The only way we will ever stop families suffering the pain of losing a loved one in a road traffic collision is by working together and sharing responsibility.”

Alison Buxton, headteacher at Long Toft Primary in Doncaster, said: “Road safety is such an important issue for our pupils and we want all our families to feel safe as they travel to and from school.

“By getting the children involved, we hope it will highlight the dangers of speeding and irresponsible parking.”