Road safety group’s Be Safe, Be Seen message gets through
HUNDREDS of islanders have benefited from a pedestrian safety charity initiative to be safe and be seen on Guernsey’s streets.
Living Streets Guernsey spent four days in the OSA pop-up shop in Smith Street during Road Safety Week giving out free hi-vis vests to highlight the message.
Secretary Pat Wisher said it had been overwhelmed this year with the take-up of the initiative.
‘In the six years that we have run this event, we have never seen such a huge number of islanders heeding our message and visiting the shop to claim their reflective vests, so much so that we ran out of adult vests by the end of Wednesday,’ she said.
‘We remained open on the Thursday for children’s vests and we are most grateful to Specsavers in Market Square for providing the majority of the children’s vests.
‘Each year we try to help schools and this year we had requests from the Grammar School to support its hike or bike Fridays and from the Ladies’ College to support its active travel initiatives.’
About 80 vests went to the two schools and will see many more youngsters benefit.
Helen Le Maitre, head of PE at Ladies’ College, said the school was grateful to the group for providing some of their students with the vests.
‘These will help keep them safe on their journey to and from school,’ she said.
‘Road safety awareness week coincided with the launch of the Ladies’ College active travel campaign and challenge, which is encouraging as many students to walk or cycle as possible.
‘The aims of active travel are to reduce pollution, ease congestion and increase activity levels and the students from the Ladies’ College are acutely aware of the benefits of each of these aims.’
Business donations from Grant Thornton, Investec, Bellerive Trust, BDO and Guernsey Post during dress-down day last month resulted in more than 800 hi-vis vests for adults and children.
In addition, Specsavers in Market Square provided £500 towards the costs of the vests and gave Living Streets 200 more children’s vests. So the total raised was £1,454 to buy them.
Living Streets is now hoping to see many more pedestrians, cyclists, dog walkers, horse riders and children brightening up our roads after dark.
