FirstNews LOOK UP! CAMPAIGN, SUPPORTED BY
A new First News Look Up! campaign, supported by JPIMedia (the publishers of this newspaper), aims to warn children about the dangers of not putting mobile phones away while crossing roads
First News has launched a campaign to warn schoolchildren about the dangers of crossing roads while using phones. The campaign is called Look Up!
Although many people are distracted by mobile phones, children are the most affected.
By the age of 12, nearly all children have a phone, and there is a clear link between the use of mobile devices and the time of serious accidents with children, particularly at the end of the school day.
THE NUMBERS ARE SHOCKING
The Covid-19 lockdown and school closures mean the road safety figures for 2020 were affected that year. But, in 2019, 6,200 pedestrians were killed or had life-changing injuries on UK roads. More than one in five of those people (1,415) were aged 17 or under – that’s around a whole class of school children EVERY week.
Accident data shows those aged 11 to 14 are the most likely to be killed or badly hurt – around 50 EVERY month.
THE EVIDENCE
Different studies over a number of years have shown that phones are a growing cause of distraction for pedestrians, affecting whether they cross a road safely.
There’s even a name for people distracted by phones: SMOMBIES (from smartphones plus zombies).
A study by the University of Lincoln in 2019 looked at mobile phone use by school children while crossing the road. They observed pupils outside a secondary school
in the north of England over a four-week period. They were watching to see if the pupils looked (or failed to look) left and right before crossing the road, whether they crossed when the pedestrian light was on red or green and whether they crossed on the crossing. The researchers found that nearly a third (31.37%) of road crossings were made by pupils with a phone or other device, and that they looked less frequently when they had them. They concluded that the safety of school-age pedestrians is affected by mobile phones and
music players.