Child pedestrian casualties in Nottinghamshire have reduced by nearly a quarter following the success of a three month campaign to encourage pupils to pay more attention when walking and cycling to and from school.

The county council’s ‘Ditch the Distraction’ campaign started in September to highlight the dangers of concentrating too hard on smartphones and portable music players and too little on the road environment.

Vinyl sheets containing safety messages were plastered on busy footways near road crossings close to 44 secondary schools in the county. Most of the temporary signage has since worn away but this is no bad thing, says Nottinghamshire road safety officer Zena Oliver.

“We were worried that if the signs were down for too long people would not notice them any more,” she said. “I had seen pavement art used as an advertising medium before but never for road safety. It seems to have had a big impact.”

Nottinghamshire County Council is about to launch a follow up highway safety campaign using vinyl footway posters to remind all road users to look out for one another at junctions. And Network Rail in the East Midlands is to borrow Nottinghamshire’s idea of pavement information to help ensure pedestrians wearing headphones remember to watch out for trains at level crossings.

Road safety manager Duncan Vernon of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said: “We encourage creative thinking in road safety education. Much research is focused on driver distraction but less so on pedestrian distraction. It can be a difficult area to tackle.”

(Images: Nottinghamshire County Council)

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