RICHMOND schoolchildren joined forces with community safety experts to promote national road safety week’.

They displayed banners and urged motorists to heed safety warnings outside their schools and nurseries.

Safer Richmondshire, local PCSOs and the children took action in support of an annual road safety awareness campaign organised by road safety charity, Brake.

The message for the 2019 campaign, which ran throughout last week, was to ‘step up for safe streets’.

It wants people to think safety – heed speed limits and consider safe technology in vehicles; think healthy – consider walking and cycling as an alternative to cars; and step up – pledging to use roads safely, minimise vehicle use, and shout out for safer systems.

Richmondshire District Council corporate director, Colin Dales, said: “Every 20 minutes someone is killed or seriously injured on British roads and they are all preventable deaths.

“We hope people in Richmondshire will think about safety on our roads 365 days a year but if we can make a difference in these days, the campaign will be more than worthwhile.”

New research from the road safety charity Brake has revealed that nearly a third of adults were in a collision, or had a near miss, with a vehicle on a UK road in the past year.

The research, from a survey of 2,000, has been published to highlight the level of danger felt on UK roads and to encourage people to join the safety campaign.