Despite most schools having flashing twin amber warning signs, too many drivers still fail to slow down at pick-up and drop-off times. With 1,200 children injured every month less than 500 metres from the school gate, the industry needs to be coming up with more answers
By Kevin Clark and Eric Woodhouse
There is, I’m afraid, no getting around the grimness of the following statistics. According to the road safety charity Brake, nine young children are killed or injured on roads in Britain every day.
Just as worrying, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, nearly 1,200 children are injured every month in traffic accidents that occur within 500 metres of their school gate.
During a recent debate in Parliament, Labour MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter also highlighted how, from her investigations, 14% of these child fatalities occur during the morning school run (or between 7am and 9am) and nearly a quarter (23%) happen after school, or between 3pm and 5pm.
As well as growing public and political concern, this is a conversation we are picking up, especially from local authorities: how can we get drivers to slow down outside our schools?
TWIN AMBER WARNING SIGNS
Outside most schools, you will normally find twin amber warning signs as you approach the school entrance. These will of course flash at the times when children are going in or coming out of school, usually morning, middle of the day and mid-afternoon/early evening.
We at Portland Traffic manufacture many of these illuminated flashing signs, and they do of course help. Nevertheless, a lot of the feedback we’re getting from street lighting engineers and from schools themselves is that drivers, too often, still don’t (or won’t) slow down, even when those lights are flashing.
What we therefore want to do is kickstart a conversation within the industry around what can we do about this? We, to be clear, don’t have a particular answer, but what we want to do is simply generate awareness and conversation about the fact this is an issue we as an industry need to be addressing, perhaps through collaboration with schools, road safety organisations, driver organisations, even perhaps government.
Maybe, too, the industry could be looking to collaborate with a university to carry out research on this? Much as Rob Baines, the ILP’s local authority lead, is looking to do around EV charging touch-potential risk, as he wrote in last month’s edition (‘This is something we want to get traction on’, March 2026, vol 91 no 3).
YEAR-ROUND PROBLEM
One worry, for us, is that, while it used to be the case that these kinds of accidents were more common in winter months, particularly when the clocks changed in October, this is now becoming a year round issue. In some cases, for rural schools especially, the children will be coming out on to roads that have a 50mph speed limit.
You hear of scenarios where drivers have not slowed down even when they’re passing the school, let alone slowing down on the approach. So, how, very simply, can we encourage drivers to slow down? Are there other things we can be doing – whether around lighting or road markings, painted gravel, sleeping policemen or even just dedicated crossing-points maybe?
Do we need new standards, guidance or regulations for what is, after all, a hugely important conflict zone on the highway? What have local authorities – rural and/or urban – found that has worked for them?
Especially given that, ideally, we’re looking for solutions that are not going to cost local authorities much to implement. If a local authority wanted something from a manufacturer, what would it be, what would that look like?
This is a conversation that is, as yet, very much at an early stage. All we’re looking to do is create reflection, generate debate and conversation in the hope that answers may emerge. We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Simply drop a line to the journal or by all means feel free to get in touch with us at Portland Traffic directly.
If you’d like to get involved in this discussion you can email Lighting Journal editor Nic Paton on nic.cormorantmedia@outlook.com or ILP Marketing and Communications Executive Annabel Brightling on annabel@theilp.org.uk
Alternatively you can contact Kevin Clark or Eric Woodhouse on kevin@portlandtraffic.co.uk or eric@portlandtraffic.co.uk respectively.
Image courtesy of Portland Traffic
This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the April edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full article, simply click on the page-turner to your right.
