THE statistics are horrifying. Hundreds of local children are killed or injured every year on Bolton's roads.

Eighteen months ago, national figures revealed that Bolton was the third worst for child road casualties in Greater Manchester. And as Greater Manchester was the worst in the country, this town's roads were officially among the most dangerous in the country for our children.

Plainly, something had to be done.

As it happens, something was already being done when these figures first shocked local experts.

The Government had reacted to research findings from the Institute of Policy and Performance that linked high road accident rates involving children to disadvantaged areas around the country.

Money would be made available through Neighbourhood Road Safety Initiatives, and local authorities like Bolton were asked to come up with "innovative" ideas to cut the numbers of young casualties.

It was what many officials like Bolton Metro's road safety officer Trevor Higson and its head of highway management John Evans wanted to hear.

They had already been leading from the front on traditional ideas like traffic calming and getting the road safety message across to children in schools. Now here was an opportunity to try different approaches as well.

"The idea," explained Trevor Higson, "was also to work alongside existing groups in the community, identifying problems and working together to solve them."

John Evans agrees that the new initiative offered different thinking. "As engineers, we had always tended to focus on problems with the roads themselves. Now the scope was wider," he said.

Listening to local people and talking with community groups and other organisations, such as the Primary Care Trust team and SureStart working at the sharp end, allowed them to come up with around 25 projects to be put forward for a share of the new Government pot.

Seven local areas had already been identified as the worst for road accidents involving children: Bolton town centre, Daubhill, Farnworth, Tonge Moor, Halliwell, Burnden and Harper Green.

While some of the approved schemes were specific to these areas, others involved a knock-on effect that would improve road safety over a much wider field.

In the event, the Bolton bid had seven projects approved, with £750,000 for these NRSI schemes, and a new local NRSI committee involving a cross-section of local agencies and organisations, to back it up.

"But this doesn't mean that more traditional schemes like traffic calming will be put back," said John Evans. "In fact, we have been given £200,000 within this money to allow us to prioritise these so that some traffic calming will happen sooner."

As well as the Bolton schemes, there was also the chance to benefit from the Greater Manchester resources. This can now be seen in the "Chill Out, Slow Down" posters around the borough and the regular broadcasts on this subject by Manchester's Galaxy radio station.

The approved schemes go right across the town - from a Safer Streets initiative in Harper Green to an interactive resource centre to make road safety training fun for children. And from encouraging residents to improve off-street parking to having markings to guide pedestrians to safer crossing points.

It also involves a change of emphasis - to try to get drivers thinking more about the way they drive, to ensure that parents can get a realistic road safety message across to their children. And to help children really understand how they should be protecting themselves from harm on the roads.

As Trevor Higson stressed: "It's all about responsibility. When a child is hurt on a road, it's no longer enough to simply state that the child ran into the road.

"We have to ask questions about our driving.

"We really do, all of us have to change."

Factfile:

The Government is putting £17.6 million into a safety initiative aimed at cutting child road accident deaths in deprived areas. Manchester City Council plans to introduce such restrictions around its schools.

Research shows that nine out of 10 drivers support 20mph zones around schools

80 per cent of parents worry that their children could be hit by speeding traffic while on foot or bike.

Around three in 100,000 people are killed in road accidents, but this figure rises to 4.4 from deprived areas and drops to around two in more affluent places.

Experts put this down to the fact that more children in deprived areas are looked after by young people and there is also less garden space.