Walk Me Home Day good for injury prevention

Walking children home from school is a safe and effective way of cutting down on child pedestrian accidents, ACC Minister Ruth Dyson said today.

Speaking on the eve of ACC ‘Walk Me Home Day’, Ms Dyson said the aim of the day was to highlight the importance of road safety for children.

“The walk home from school is the most dangerous time for children in terms of pedestrian injuries and death.

“‘Walk Me Home Day’ encourages people to supervise their children, identify safe walking routes, reduce the volume of traffic, and relieve car congestion at the school gate. It also has important health and social benefits for both adults and children.”

Ruth Dyson said ‘Walk Me Home Day’ was a good example of the government’s focus on injury prevention.

“In the past year, ACC has doubled the number of frontline injury prevention consultants, increased the injury prevention budget to over $20 million, and established 23 ThinkSafe community plans.

“We are also developing an overarching framework to promote injury prevention, called the NZ Injury Prevention Strategy.”

A discussion document for the strategy will be released shortly, followed by a round of public consultation. The strategy is expected to be finalised by the middle of next year.

Ruth Dyson congratulated the organisers of Kidsafe Week, which begins tomorrow, for increasing public awareness of the importance of injury prevention. The two themes for the week are reducing child pedestrian injuries and preventing drownings, particularly for under-five-year-olds.

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