DOCTORS and nurses from Hampshire will take to the streets in a bid to help drive down the number of accidents on roads across the south.

Staff from Southampton Children’s Hospital will join with colleagues from the emergency services, as well as Southampton City and Hampshire County Councils, in the city’s Guildhall Square on Sunday.

Visitors will be given information on how to prepare for a safe journey, what happens on the roadside in the event of an accident and what happens in hospital when someone has been seriously injured.

The event, in its second year, will be one of the largest annual awareness events of its kind in the country.

It comes as part of a major campaign to improve road safety education, with more than 16,000 children injured on UK roads every year – including around 2,000 who are seriously injured and between 50 to 60 fatalities.

Members of the public will be given a stark insight into the consequences of car accidents, including a chance to view the wreckage of a crashed car from an incident on the Isle of Wight which led to a child’s death.

They will also be able to understand the effects of alcohol on driving in a beer goggle game, take a breathalyser test, make simulated 999 calls, learn how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and see road and air ambulance kits, vehicles and team members.

During the hospital experience, emergency department and orthopaedic clinicians from University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust and Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust will offer the chance to become part of a trauma team treating injured mannequins.

There will also be an opportunity to meet radiologists and neurosurgeons who will offer demonstrations involving scans, x-rays, skulls and drills.

Dr Clarissa Chase, a consultant paediatrician at Southampton Children’s Hospital and one of the organisers, said: “This event really promises to be something special and is such an incredible team effort from all of our emergency services and councils.

“With so many incidents and children being seriously injured or killed on our roads every year, it is vitally important we take action to raise awareness – and we can only do that by ensuring we really capture people’s attention and imagination.”

The event will run from 10am until 3pm.