Driveway Safety Are your kids at risk?
Shannon and Rebecca have two gorgeous children and, drive way safety is now at the forefront of their mind.
After hearing about an unfortunate accident where a fathers vehicle accidentally ran over his two year old son, Shannon admitted that this type of accident is a big fear for both of them.
Like most parents, it is when something happens close to them, they think about measures to help safeguard their precious children.
When looking at the risks associated with Driveways, I came across research provided by Bureau of infrastructure Transport and Regional Economics. Their data shows that on average, seven children are killed each year and over 60 are seriously injured after being hit or run over by a motor vehicle at home. In light of these alarming figures, the Bureau of Infrastructure Transport and Regional Economic produced a pamphlet.
Driveway Safety, Are you kids at Risk?
- The statistics show that very young children are at the greatest risk.
- Many children who survive these incidents sustain severe and permanent injuries
This pamphlet needs to be widely distributed , we need to make as many people aware of the hazards around Driveway Safety. The focus on Driveways need to change. People have to consider them a risk zone.
We are the first ones to acknowledge that driveway safety is a complex issue and, there is no single solution, but at the Local Government level we can make the pamphlet widely available, we want people to be more aware, we need to do anything we can, to help in reducing the incidence of driveway-related trauma.
There is no doubt that any measures are not substitutes for active and close supervision of small children, however, promoting awareness of Driveways being risk zones can play an important part.
We are so passionate about this. The Driveway Safety “Are your kids at risk” is the type of awareness that is a great guide and we believe should be actively promoted at Council level.
At a Local level we can aim to put greater emphasis of Driveways being risk zones and then providing parental awareness and prevention strategies.
Having this type of guide adopted and promoted across private, Council and community based childcare centres in the Local Government area will help us reinforce the message.
“Driveways are risk zones”
If you relate this field to pool safety, behavioural change measures and the use of fences have dramatically reduced the incidence of toddler pool immersion in Australia over the last 30 years.
The pool safety example lends support to education and awareness programs and, the inclusion of design features that seek to also separate young children for vehicle areas in residential settings.
Not everyone has a pool but everyone has a driveway.
We are asking all residents to support us in having Council adopt the Driveway safety flyer guide as we believe these will complement the other Child Safety awareness programs already supported by Council.
Further reading on the discussion paper issued by Bureau of infrastructure Transport and Regional Economics and driveway safety design features that offers practical options such as making Driveways risk zones could be supported at Local Government Level.
Driveway Safety Design features.
The Australian Government Department of Infrastructure and Transport also released a discussion paper that discusses how design features are an important measure that need to be considered, they are practical and may improve safety of children around driveways, and some suggestions should be adopted by the Penrith City Council
The guide for best practice design is to encourage and assist home owners, designers and builders to implement appropriate safeguards.
Principles that could be adopted into a house design framework could include:
- Recognition of the vehicle areas (Garage to street) on properties are risk zones.
- Ensure young children are unable to gain unsupervised access to the vehicle area from inside the home.
Please support our push to get Council to implement this programs and design principles.
This report highlights many disturbing facts and we need to act now. We support all the recommendations outlined in the report commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development. We need to act now to have these recommendations supported by Local Governments.
Please help us our children deserve to have all the best safety measures available to parents now.
If you would like to read the full report, click on the link below:
https://infrastructure.gov.au/roads/safety/driveway_safety/index.aspx
Kidsafe also included guidance about driveway safety as part of its home safety messages.
https://www.kidsafe.org.au/hot-topic.html