This morning got off to a really horrible start. We saw a little girl get run over on the way to school. Luckily it's a narrow road where cars have to slow right down and wait their turn to get through so she wasn't badly hurt but even so, it was horrific to watch and as the ambulance arrived with sirens blaring to cart her off to hospital, I couldn't help but imagine what it would have been like if it had been one of the Madhouse kids.
I took advantage of the moment to drill into Pierre (again) just why it is that I want him to hold my hand and stay on the pavement and look both ways and use the pedestrian crossings. Then I thought about the unspoken messages I give him and the bad examples I sometimes set. I'm pretty good most of the time and always make the kids get actively involved in looking to see if it's safe to cross and pushing the button for the green man, but even so, I noticed that I often cut the corner on the way to school by crossing the road diagonally twice rather than walking the extra 100 yards around the long side which is just laziness and a very bad habit for the kids to get into. I also occasionally cross when the red man is showing if I've looked both ways and know there are no cars and I also sometimes cut straight across the road (again checking it's safe) rather than walking the extra 20 metres to the zebra crossing. I do always say "Mummy's being naughty, we should go to the crossing because it's safer" but it's still a bad example to set for the kids so I'll make a determined effort to go all out to be even safer from now on.
It's rather ironic that this week is Brake's annual Road Safety Week (with the theme "Look Out For Each other"), and to support this, Michelin has developed a programme of activities to increase awareness amongst young drivers in the importance of staying safe on the roads. Throughout this week, Michelin is releasing a series of hard-hitting videos of young people's real life experiences with road safety across their social media channels, based around important road safety topics that relate to young people, from drink driving to speeding and distractions.
A new video will be released every day this week. Here is their first video focusing on Drink Driving.
All Road Safety Week videos can be seen on the Michelin Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MichelinUK) and Twitter @MichelinTyres, as well as on its YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/michelinuk). Over the course of the week Michelin will use the videos to build discussions around road safety and for young and experienced drivers to share their experiences.
As well as these videos, Michelin has also started its schools road safety tours, where they will be travelling around UK schools with their road-safety puppet shows for the rest of the year, teaching young people the importance of road safety, whether they are drivers or passengers.
If it only prevents one accident like the one we witnessed this morning, it will be worth it !
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