1. Brake supports the Decade of Action for
SPEED
Workshop (KS2)
Brake’s KS2 Speed lesson discusses road safety, with a particular emphasis on the dangers of speeding – something that puts kids’ lives at risk every single day.
One in four deadly crashes in the UK involves someone who was driving too fast.
40 children are killed or seriously injured on our roads every single week.
It’s so important to talk to children about basic road safety messages, and also remind parents, carers and other adults of their responsibilities when it comes to keeping our roads safe and protecting young lives.
This lesson on Speed supports Brake’s poster competition, where children aged 4–11 have the chance to design a powerful road safety poster about the dangers of fast traffic. Winning designs will be made into big banners, to be displayed outside schools or in the local community. Children can also win vouchers for themselves and their school, and a visit from Brake’s mascot, Zak the Zebra!
The lesson is designed to get pupils to think about dangers on the road, before deepening their knowledge about why speeding traffic is particularly dangerous, and why adults drive too fast and put lives at risk.
Aim: Discuss ways of getting to school and some of the dangers children might face as they travel on our roads. Discuss why fast traffic is so dangerous. Consider why adults drive too fast, and what can be done to slow traffic down. Talk about Brake’s road safety poster competition, and encourage children to design their posters.
Resources needed:
A print-out of the poster competition template for each child in your class, plus a few spares
Drawing materials (crayons, paint, coloured pencils etc)
1 x Poster competition entry form, for you to fill in once your class has completed their posters
[optional activity in Slide 8] Trundle wheel to measure out different distances (or long tape measure if a trundle wheel is not available)
[optional activity in Slide 8] Large pieces of paper or cardboard marked up with the speeds and stopping distances shown in the chart on Slide 11
Organised by
Sponsored by
Supported by
Brake supports the Decade of Action for
Road Safety

2. HANDS UP! How do we use roads?
Ways of getting to school
How many of you get to school this way
Good points
Bad points
Cycling
By car
By bus
Firstly, talk to the class about how they use roads.
Ask how everyone gets to school each day.
Ask the class to put their hands up to show whether they walk, cycle, are driven, or get the bus to school. Record the numbers in the table.
Then ask the class to call out good and bad points for each method of getting to school. These will be different depending on your school and pupils, but some suggested good and bad points are given below.
Walking – good points:
Healthy
Environmentally-friendly
Sociable – allows you to chat with friends and/or family members
Walking – bad points:
Can be dangerous if there are roads with no pavements or crossings, or roads with fast traffic
Can be cold or wet in winter!
Cycling – good points:
Cycling – bad points:
Can be dangerous if there are no cycle paths, or if there are roads with fast traffic
Driven in car – good points:
Warm and dry
May be only option for pupils who live further away from school if there’s no bus
Driven in car – bad points:
Bad for the environment
Unhealthy
Adds to congestion and parking problem around school
If parents drive too fast or park on yellow lines, it can put pupils who are on foot or bicycles at risk
Bus – good points:
Sociable – can talk with friends
Better for the environment than driving as there are lots of pupils all in one vehicle
Bus – bad points:
May mean waiting at the bus stop in cold and wet weather
Ask pupils how they would like to travel to school if they could choose any of these options.
Sum up by talking about how we all use roads in different ways. Roads are shared by people on foot, bicycles, motorbikes, horses and in vehicles. Because we’re sharing roads with others, we all need to look after ourselves and other people as best we can to make our roads safer.
We all use roads to get about
Roads are shared by people on foot, on bikes, and in vehicles
We all need to look after ourselves and other people on roads

3. Danger zone!
We all need to share roads carefully, looking after ourselves and other people.
But sometimes people are thoughtless, and use roads in a selfish way that puts other people in danger.
One of the biggest dangers on our roads is drivers who drive too fast.

4. Noisy!
Fast traffic
Can you think of (or can you remember, if you have already run Brake’s Speed assembly) some reasons why driving fast might be so bad?
It is dangerous – people die or can be hurt very badly if they are in a crash. Five children are killed or very badly hurt every single day in the UK. Even on roads that you know well, it’s so important to remember the Green Cross Code, and watch and listen for danger [click red circle]
It is scary – fast traffic zooming past us, or nearly being hit by a car, can be very frightening. [click blue circle]
It is noisy. [click yellow circle] [play sound effect]
It causes pollution and global warming, and makes the air dirty so it’s harder for plants, animals and people to breathe. [click grey circle]
It might put us off walking or riding our bicycles. [click green circle]

5. Why is fast traffic so dangerous?
FACT: It takes time for vehicles to come to a complete stop.
We know that fast traffic is dangerous, scary, noisy and polluting.
One of the things that makes fast cars, lorries and other speeding vehicles so dangerous is because they can’t stop instantly.
When a driver spots something ahead that means they need to stop, like a child running into the road suddenly, they can’t make their vehicle stop straight away.
First the driver’s eyes have to tell the driver’s brain that they have seen the child; and then the driver’s brain has to tell the driver’s foot to move onto the brake pedal and press it down; and then it takes even more time for the brakes to press against the spinning wheels, and for the wheels to turn gradually slower so that the car slows down and come to a complete stop.
The distance that a car travels from when the driver spots a hazard to when the car stops completely is called the “stopping distance”.

6. QUIZ TIME: why is fast traffic so dangerous?
Q: If a vehicle drives faster, does the stopping distance:
get longer? b) get shorter? c) stay the same?
A: If a vehicle drives faster, the stopping distance
a) gets longer
Ask the class to put their hands up to say whether they think the stopping distance gets longer, gets shorter, or stays the same when a vehicle goes faster.
[reveal answer] The stopping distance is longer. The faster a vehicle goes, the longer it takes to come to a complete stop.

7. Why is fast traffic so dangerous?
[stopping distances chart]
If a driver was driving at 20mph and they spotted something or someone in the road up ahead, it would take them just 12 metres to press the brake and for the car stop.
If they were driving at 40mph, it would take three times this distance – 36 metres. That means that if you crossed a road without looking properly (or where you couldn’t see if anything was coming), and there was a car coming towards you at 40mph, they have to be more than 36 metres away to be able to stop in time.
The slower traffic goes, the better chance drivers have of spotting you and being able to stop in time if they need to. Very fast traffic is extremely dangerous – which is why you should only walk and cycle around roads with low speed limits and avoid roads with faster traffic. But be aware that on any roads, a driver might decide to be dangerous and drive too fast.

8. Why is fast traffic so dangerous?
[optional activity]
If you have time, you could measure the classroom to be able to demonstrate the distances shown in the chart, or even take the children out into the playground to measure the different distances with a trundle wheel, with different children representing stopping distances at different speeds.

9. Why do people drive too fast?
I was daydreaming and didn’t notice how fast I was going.
I was late for work, so I had to hurry!
Driving fast is fun!
So why do people drive too fast?
There are all kinds of reasons that people give for driving too fast and breaking the speed limit. Here are some of them. Do you think they are good reasons?
1. “I was daydreaming and didn’t notice how fast I was going” – put up your hand if you think this is a good reason for speeding. Driving a car is complicated, and drivers need to concentrate on the road. Anything that stops a driver from looking and listening to the other traffic – like mobile phones, daydreaming, or children fighting in the back seat! – is dangerous.
2. “I was late for work, so I had to hurry!” – who thinks that this man had a good reason to speed? Being late is never a good reason to drive too fast. It is better to arrive late than to have a crash and wreck someone’s life.
3. “I was only going a little bit over the speed limit, and that doesn’t matter” – does it matter if people go just a tiny bit over the speed limit? Yes, it does matter! If people drive fast, they have less time to brake and stop in an emergency. Driving even a little bit over the speed limit means that a driver might hurt someone because they can’t stop in time.
4. “Driving fast is fun” – hands up if this reason is OK. Driving isn’t a game. Driving fast makes it much more likely that the driver will hurt someone, which certainly isn’t fun for the person they hurt.
None of these adults has a good reason for driving fast. There is no good reason for people to speed.
I was only going a
little bit over the speed limit, and that doesn’t matter.

10. What slows traffic down?4 1 3 2
What slows traffic down? 5
Can you think of (or remember, if you have already run Brake’s Speed assembly) some of the things that can slow traffic down, so that roads around our schools and homes can be safer?
[click on the numbers to make the pictures appear as the children make the suggestions below]
1. slow speed limits for drivers
2. signs showing that children are crossing
3. pedestrian crossings
4. lollipop man or woman
5. making cars and lorries that have computers that can make the vehicles stick to speed limits
6. speed bumps
7. zebra crossings
8. traffic lights
9. speed cameras 9 6 7 8

11. Brake’s road safety poster competition
We’ve talked about some things that are dangerous and safe on roads.
We’ve talked about one of the biggest dangers – fast traffic – and about how the faster it goes, the more dangerous it is.
We have also talked about why people might drive too fast, and about some of the things that can be done to slow traffic down.
Now it’s time to put on your artist’s berets! The road safety charity Brake, which helps people who have been badly hurt in road crashes, and the families is running a road safety poster competition. Brake is asking children to design a road safety poster about SPEED.
Posters should explain to adults why driving fast is bad. We’d like to see some bold, bright, imaginative designs, perhaps including some facts about speeding, or simple statements about slowing down and staying safe on our roads.
The children who design the winning posters will win vouchers for themselves and the school; a school visit from Brake’s mascot Zak the Zebra; and your design will be made into a big banner that will go on display near school.
[Note for teachers: The competition closing date is 4pm on Friday 30 June Please make sure you allow enough time to collect everyone’s posters and submit them to Brake! Please make sure that each poster is clearly labelled with the child’s name, age and school. For full details, see the back of the entry form.]