A school worried about the safety of its pupils has resorted to shock tactics to make parents think twice about where they park on nearby roads.

Heaton Primary School, in Haworth Road, Bradford, and newly- formed Chellow Community Group called in help from the district’s emergency services to mock up a road accident after school yesterday.

Father-of-two Chris Turner was one of the parents behind the idea in a bid to get people to park more sensibly when dropping off or picking up their youngsters.

“It can be chaos round here with cars, so we decided to come up with something different to grab parents’ attention and make them think about their actions and what the consequences could be,” he said.

Mr Turner, who has a child in nursery and another in Year 1, said: “We’ve had quite a lot of near-misses, especially on the side roads near school – one is too many and a couple of years ago a young girl was actually hit.

“No one wants their child or anyone else’s to be at risk on the road so everyone has to be responsible and park sensibly.”

A Bradford Council-backed campaign called Tales of the Road was launched earlier this month to promote road safety.

Government figures show that the biggest contributory factors to road accidents are children crossing near parked vehicles or not looking properly when starting to cross the road. In the Bradford district last year, one pedestrian aged six to 11 was killed and 17 seriously injured.

Bradford road safety officers visit around 40 primary schools a year where they deliver pedestrian training sessions to over 1,750 pupils.

Famida Begum, from the Chellow Community Group, said: “There were concerns in the community about road safety, especially near the school, so the group came up with the idea of the accident reconstruction. It’s Road Safety Week so it was an appropriate time to do it and hopefully make a difference in the area where we live to make it safer.”

Firefighters from Fairweather Green mocked up a car crash and with help from paramedics and the police showed pupils and parents what would happen at an accident scene and how someone trapped in a car would be freed. Watch commander Chris Hannah said: “The general message from the reconstruction is that we want people to do everything they can to keep themselves and others safe on the roads.”