Another week, another child on a pavement killed by a driver

This was the week an uninsured hit-and-run driver killed a two-week-old baby as he was being pushed along a pavement by his mother. An unimaginably horrific event were it to be an isolated incident. However, it’s far from that. Over 40 people on pavements and verges in the UK are killed every year by drivers.

It’s highly unusual for the subject of road danger to be covered objectively by the mainstream media, which is odd given the alarming frequency at which it claims the lives of children. For example, when four-year-old Esme Weir was crushed to death on a pavement in Liverpool in front of her mother by a driver who didn’t want to hold up traffic, the story was covered by local newspapers but did not reach the national news agenda. Unsurprisingly, the driver was acquitted of all charges. When five-year-old Lennon Toland was killed by van driver who had mounted the pavement to use unauthorised entry no charges were brought. The roll call of children killed by dangerous drivers is long and unending – a litany shaming not only a broken criminal justice system that fails their families so spectacularly, but our priorities as a society.

At best, coverage of road danger is highly selective and almost always divisive.

If you want to kill someone, the best way to do it is in a car…

If you want to kill someone, the best way to do it is in a car because you are highly likely to get away with it. One of the reasons is that people are being killed by cars all the time. We tolerate a level of killing by cars that we don’t tolerate in any other area. If as many soldiers were killed in combat every year in UK wars, we would be up in arms. We would be outraged. Horrified. Astonished. We would demand government action. But when it comes to people being killed by cars, we just accept this as part of the ordinary course of life, and death. Well, it’s about time we stopped accepting it.

Stop Killing our Children examines how road danger damages us all, whatever our age and however we travel, and questions our collective blindness to both its cause and remedy.The 40-minute, crowdfunded film is narrated by the BBC’s John Simpson and features interviews with Chris Boardman, Dr Rachel Aldred, Dr Ian Walker, George Monbiot and the founders of the Stop de Kindermoord movement amongst others.Please help turn the tide against road danger.

Please watch the full-length film below and share.

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We were established in 1990 as an ethical provider of green, reliable travel services. Twenty-nine years on, we continue to offer cycle insurance, breakdown cover and  mobility scooter insurance while putting concern for the environment at the heart of all we do.