Child Safety Zones
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The City Council is undertaking a programme of area-wide traffic calming schemes, called Child Safety Zones, (CSZs), prioritised mainly according to the number of child accidents. A key feature of these zones being a self enforcing 20mph speed limit.
The zones, in priority order are:
- Firth Park South,
- Parson Cross North / East Ecclesfield,
- Southey Green East,
- Shirecliffe East,
- Shiregreen North East,
- Darnall North West,
- Manor North,
- Stannington South,
- Woodthorpe South,
- Wadsley Bridge.
One of the Government’s accident reduction targets is a reduction of 50% of children killed or seriously injured by the year 2010. It is known that self-enforcing 20 mph zones achieve a reduction of 60% of all accidents; 67% of child accidents and 29% of cycle accidents. Our programme of self-enforcing 20 mph zones will help to achieve this target.
A typical zone would consist of entry gateways and appropriate self enforcing measures including road humps and cushions to ensure that drivers travel below 20 mph. Within a well designed 20 mph zone, drivers hold a steady speed which results in lower emissions and less noise.
A budget allocation of around £500,000 has been identified annually to enable a programme to be developed where one or two schemes will be built each year.
The introduction of a Child Safety Zone provides the opportunity to link pedestrian routes within the area and address obstacles to pedestrian movement. Whilst the emphasis would be placed on routes to school, other premises such as shops, health centres and post offices are also identified with a view to improving pedestrian access.
Local children are asked, via the schools, to produce pictures to promote the message that motorists should drive slowly. The aim is to have a sign unique to each zone to help give a sense of identity and demonstrate community ownership of the scheme. It would also give drivers entering the area the feeling that children are likely to be present on street.
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