Improve road safety and provide safer routes to school for young people living in villages and rural areas

Many of the current travel initiatives and projects going on around the County focus on sustainable travel in and between build up areas, e.g.Wimborne/Ferndown where the infrastructure has been upgraded to allow residents to walk and cycle around that area more safely. Unfortunately there seems to be a presumption that villages and more rural areas are already safe for children/young people to cycle and walk around, due to the perceived 'quietness' of these areas. This is not the case and many minor roads (B, C category) leading to and from villages still have 60mph speed limits and no traffic calming measures making them dangerous and unsuitable for walking or cycling.  In addition some schools in rural areas do not have safe walking or cycling routes available to pupils, resulting in children either risking their lives to cycle/walk on dangerous roads, or being taken to school in a car or bus. 

We need a better system to allow communities to inform the Council about problems like this and more dialogue from the council about what is realistically possible to improve the situation, and how communities could go about assisting the council to achieve their aims. 

An example of the problem is the route to Lytchett Minster Upper School from the village of Lytchett Matravers. The route to the school is a B road running east from the village to the school, incorporating a cross roads and a turnoff. The road has a 60mph speed limit with no traffic calming measures, and visibility along the road is not particularly good. It gets busy during school drop off times and most parents do not allow their children to walk or cycle to school due to the serious risk of injury. This risk has unfortunately been realised recently where a 14 year old pupil cycling to school collided with a car. The pupil sustained life changing injuries and narrowly avoided death. 

Children and young people should be able to move around the area they live without the risk of injury by motor vehicles. 

The current situation means:

• They are less independent as they rely on parents to drive them to places in a car, or use a bus
• They are not able to fully enjoy the benefits of the outside environment and spend less time being physically active
• Parents restrict children’s movement around an area due to fear of injury from cars/roads
• Young people looking for work outside their village or area are heavily reliant on an infrequent bus service, or have no access to public transport at all
• Cycling is unattractive and often dismissed due to valid safety concerns 

Road design and calming measures have moved on in recent years, let's implement these ideas to improve the day to day environment for young people living in Dorset