In three years 300 people were killed and almost 20,000 injured in car crashes in Kent.*

Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS) were needed at 23 per cent of the 14,384 accidents on the county’s roads between January 2005 and December 2007.

Firefighters in the county are now being called to more road crashes - 25 per cent - than they are house fires.

KFRS is tasked with reducing the number of people killed and injured on roads in Kent and Medway.

It hopes to cut the number of deaths and serious injuries from a three-year rolling average of 825 to 751 by March 2011.

It’s taking a catch-them-early approach with a four-pronged education programme aimed at teenagers and young people getting behind the wheel for the first time.

• Operation Carmageddon takes road safety education to where young people gather such as car parks, outside night clubs.

• Car’n’age is a workshop-based programme taking place at fire stations.

• Theatre and film production Licence to Kill includes live testimonies from parents who have lost children, young people who have been in car crashes and from emergency service personnel. It’s staged at theatres and live venues around the county, with students invited to performances.

• The RUSH programme, a graphic video production with follow-up classroom sessions, is delivered to Year 11 students in schools.

*statistics exclude Medway

Road Safety Week

A quarter of all drivers killed across the country are under the age of 25.

KM Group has teamed up with KFRS to help get the safety first message across to young drivers.

Next week Road Safety Week (November 10 - 16) www.kentonline.co.uk will be featuring the stories of young people who have been killed or injured on Kent’s roads, and looking in detail at KFRS’s preventative approach to cutting fatalities, serious injuries and ultimately crashes on the county’s roads.

Road Victim Awareness Day

Sunday, November 16 is Road Victim Awareness Day. If you have lost someone you loved in a car crash in Kent, and wish to pay tribute to them, send us a picture of the person, along with their name and age, and the place and date of the accident in which they died. We will then publish these pictures on KentOnline on November 16.

You can do this by emailing editor.kentonline@thekmgroup.co.uk, typing Road Victim Awareness Day into the subject box.

Alternatively you can post the picture and details, along with a contact phone number for yourself, to Road Victim Awareness Day, KentOnline, KM Group, Ginsbury Close, Sir Thomas Longley Road, Medway City Estate, ME2 4DU. Please include a stamped addressed envelope if you would like the picture returned.

See also:

~How roadworkers are in the path of danger

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~Don't dice with death at level crossings

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