My little boy Kian aka Evil Kenevil currently has no road safety awareness, in fact it’s fair to say he has even less than our dog Baloo which is saying something. As August is National Road Victim Awareness month, I was staggered by the facts that some 30 million people have been killed on the world’s roads since 1896 when records began, and every year sees a further 1.2 million killed and 30 million injured! Those statistics are enough to shock anyone into reinforcing road safety to their children.

Yes, I know, pretty serious stuff but it’s one of the things that I think, as parents, we worry about the most. How many times have you drilled into your kids “Stop, look left, look right, look left again and go”? I still remember the little hedgehogs in the road safety advert a few years ago.

So how do you teach children how to be safe? Well I’ve been surfing the net to find out and the best I’ve come across -which informs kids of the dangers in a child-friendly way (not the advert of the little girl who’s been knocked over at 40mph, it gave me nightmares) - was the new Think! Tales of the Road campaign.

Tales of the Road has a variety of cartoon adverts, competitions and parent packs which highlight the different elements of road safety i.e. Stop Look Listen; wearing bright clothesor a UV vest; wearing a helmet and always finding a safe place to cross.

I’ve found that if you show your child the video and then ask them what went wrong, they start to understand what they need to do to be safe on the roads. There is also a really good little game for them to play on the computer to teach them where to find the best place to cross.

Hopefully this has helped!