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ROAD SAFETY DEMANDS A RATIONAL AND COLD HEARTED APPROACH SAYS SAFE SPEED
Transport 2000 and Barnardos have today published a report entitled: ''Stop, Look and Listen: children talk about traffic''. Safe Speed says emotional appeals won''t save lives on the roads, and a cold hearted, rational, and above all scientific approach to road safety is required. Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign said: ''It''s all about the right information. If we base our approach to road safety on the opinions of children we won''t be effective and more will die. Instead we need to look at the vital psychological factors that underlie our system of road safety - it is after all the best in the world. It''s facts, facts, facts that we need. Nothing less will do.'' Paul continues: ''There''s little enough true fact in the road safety debate as it is. When a childrens'' charity, and a pressure group funded by public transport operators comes along with puff like this we should be ignoring it in spades.'' Paul continues: ''There''s nothing I''d like more than to see road deaths fall, but cheap emotional appeals from vested interests are never going to help deliver improvement. Arguments like those offered by Transport 2000 have already set UK road safety back by a decade. Let''s have no more of it.'' Paul continues: ''It''s good and it''s human that children are afraid of traffic. Traffic is dangerous and fear is a perfectly correct natural reaction that actually keeps us safe. We should never hope for our roads to become playgrounds.'' Recent DfT research tells us that just 131 children aged 14 and under died on our roads in 2003. Total child pedestrian deaths (aged 0 to 15 this time) were just 74. There were 172 child deaths (aged 0 to 14) from accidents other than road accidents in 2003. Just 22 child pedestrians under the age of 8 died in 2003, and 39 under the age of 12. Every one is a tragedy and every one should be prevented, but it simply isn''t carnage out there. We have a fine road safety system and we have to work intelligently to improve it.
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