As a result, parents need to educate their children about the importance of road safety before young lives are lost, a leading teacher says.

Port Pirie West Primary School deputy principal Adam Wilson is concerned by the many near-misses with cars involving students walking to or from school.

He highlighted the tragedy of 13-year-old boy Michael Benson who died after being hit by a car in Adelaide on his way home from school just two weeks ago.

“That story was an unfortunate eye-opener and it is sad that some of our own students may be heading down the same path,” Mr Wilson said.

He said that there were three main causes of the dangerous near-misses – kids riding scooters and bicycles in an unsafe manner, drivers going too fast through children’s cross-ings and students on foot not looking before crossing a road.

There are ways that parents can help to make their children’s journey to and from school much safer.

Mr Wilson encourages parents to try a few different tactics to see which is best.

“Parents can help by driving their kids to school, or accompanying them if they walk or ride,” he said.

“Do a trial run, and see which works best.”

He is also urging local police to help in patrolling school areas at the beginning and the end of school days.

“If students ride their bicycles or scooters within school grounds we can punish them, but if they use these vehicles in a dangerous manner outside school, there is not much we can do,” Mr Wilson said. “Having regular police patrols during hours when children are travelling to school or home will make it much easier

to enforce safer practices.”

Although Mr Wilson would like it if schools could do more to protect children from road incidents, the responsibility ultimately rests with the parents.

“As teachers, we can only do so much – we have held a few assemblies and road safety sessions in the past,” Mr Wilson said.

“We would like to introduce road safety classes to our school, but it just would not fit into our busy curriculum.

“Our duty of care can only extends to the school boundaries so the responsibility of educating children about road safety lies with parents.”

SAFETY FIRST... Pirie West students Ryan Johnson, 9, left, and Zac Robinson, 7, pictured with deputy principal Adam Wilson at one of the school’s crossings.