by Dr Steve McCabe

MY GRANDMOTHER was born and brought up in one of the poorest streets in Edinburgh. On Christmas Eve 1907 she was given a shilling by her father to buy a doll she had been eyeing up for months in the window of a shop on nearby Nicolson Street. In her excitement to get to the shop she did not notice the north bound tram as she stepped off the Nicolson Street kerb. Her right leg was caught by the tram wheels and she was dragged a few hundred yards towards Surgeons Hall. She was taken to the nearby Royal Infirmary but her leg could not be salvaged. Gangrene set in and to save her life the leg had to be amputated. She spent the rest of her life lugging around a heavy metal leg strapped over her shoulder.

But the consequences of her accident were more than just physical. She was deemed to be a ‘cripple’ and as such she was not allowed into mainstream education. Instead she had to go to the ‘cripple school’ run by Edinburgh Cripple and Invalid Children’s Aid Society. Whatever chance she might have had of progressing out of poverty through education disappeared.

So, I was only too well aware, from a very young age, of the dangers faced by children on our streets and roads.

In 2019 Norway achieved a remarkable milestone. For the first time in well over a century, not a single child aged 15 and under died on Norwegian roads in 2019. Drill down further to the Norwegian capital, Oslo, and the achievements of 2019 are even more remarkable. In that year not a single pedestrian or cyclist of any age died on Oslo’s streets and, overall, there was just a single road traffic fatality when a car ran into a fence.