- More than 3,350 children aged 7 or under were killed or injured on roads in Britain in 2023 – equivalent to nine young children being killed or injured every day.
- The number of children aged 0–7 killed or seriously injured on British roads has increased from 572 in 2022 to 591 in 2023.
- Brake, the road safety charity, is hosting Beep Beep! Day – a national event to help young children and their carers learn about road safety.
- 1,475 schools, nurseries and childminders representing more than 90,000 children are taking part in a Beep Beep! Day today, Wednesday 19 March 2025.
- Everyone who has signed up has received free teaching resources designed to help 2–7-year-olds learn about being safe near roads.
- All resources feature characters from Aardman’s popular series Timmy Time.
To coincide with this year’s Beep Beep! Day, Brake has highlighted the true extent of child casualties on the nation's roads (see Table 1).
Latest official figures show that 3,355 children aged 7 and under were killed or injured on roads in Britain in 2023 – that includes 17 children who died and 574 who suffered serious injuries. Road death and road harm has a devastating impact on families, schools and communities, yet these figures show that, on average, nine young children are being harmed on our roads every single day. [1]
The data also shows that in 2023, 1,869 children aged 0–7 were killed or injured while travelling by car, 1,157 while walking and 119 while cycling on roads in Britain. [2]
(Last year, Brake reported that 3,402 children aged 7 and under were killed or injured on roads in Britain in 2022 – 20 young children were killed and 552 suffered serious injuries. In 2022, 1,943 children aged 0–7 were killed or injured while travelling by car, 1,157 while walking and 110 while cycling. [3])
Brake supports families affected by road death and injury
Brake has now revealed that, over the same period in 2023, the charity’s National Road Victim Service provided specialist emotional and practical support to more than 2,000 families across the UK, helping them cope with their grief and navigate the complex procedures that often follow a road crash. At any point in time, more than 700 road victim families are receiving support from Brake, including parents, grandparents, siblings, friends and people who have witnessed a traumatic incident. Many of the families supported have been involved in multi-fatality crashes, and around 7% of support cases involve the death of a child.
Brake has run Beep Beep! Days for more than 20 years, and the charity has been delighted to see demand for participation rise in recent years. We know that all childcare providers, schools and families share concern for the risk to children’s lives on our roads, and Beep Beep! Day is a great way to help them approach this issue.
Beep Beep! Days focus on three simple things to help young children be safer near roads – holding hands with a grown up when walking, crossing roads at safe places and always using a child seat when travelling by car. They also send an important reminder to everyone to use roads safely to protect all road users, but especially young children who are so vulnerable on roads.
As grown ups, we must always take responsibility for keeping children safe on our roads, but this is a great opportunity to start conversations about road danger and help them understand why road safety is so important
Ross Moorlock, chief executive officer, Brake
Everyone who signs up to take part in a Beep Beep! Day receives free teaching resources to help children learn about road safety in a fun and engaging way, plus important messages to send home to parents and carers, all illustrated with characters from Aardman’s popular children’s TV programme Timmy Time.
Ross Moorlock, Chief Executive Officer at Brake, said: “We’re delighted to see almost 1,500 schools, nurseries and childminders take part in a Beep Beep! Day this year. As grown ups, we must always take responsibility for keeping children safe on our roads, but this is a great opportunity to start conversations about road danger and help them understand why road safety is so important.
“We see, every day, the devastating effects of road crashes on families, through the work of our National Road Victim Service, which this month is supporting 60 families following the death of a child in a road crash. It’s heartbreaking to hear that nine young children are harmed on our roads every single day, and shocking that the number of children who have been killed or seriously injured in road crashes has risen in recent years.
“At Brake, we are doing everything we can to prevent road death and injury, and we will continue to campaign for the solutions that we know will make our journeys safer, whoever we are and however we travel. We call on the Government to issue its long-awaited Road Safety Strategy with urgency, with evidence-based measures to end road death and injury.”
Beep Beep! Day with Timmy Time resources are hosted on Brake’s website. Find out more and sign up to take part at Beep Beep! Days | Brake
Table 1. Reported child road casualties in Great Britain by region, 2023
Data shows the number of children aged 0-7 killed, seriously injured or slightly injured in road crashes in the 11 regions of Great Britain in 2023. Source: Department for Transport [1].
| Table 1. Reported child road casualties in Great Britain by region, 2023 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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References
- Department for Transport (2024) Reported road casualties Great Britain, annual report: 2023 and supporting data sets.
- Ibid.
- Department for Transport (2023) Reported road casualties Great Britain, annual report: 2022 and supporting data sets.