Scotland’s New Mechanimals Lessons Teach Road Danger as ASN Needs Hit a Record

Transport Scotland wants Scottish teenagers to think of an oncoming car the way they would think of a charging rhino. That is the working idea behind Mechanimals, a free digital road safety resource built for every secondary school in the country and rolled out this month.

Bundled into the same launch is a smaller, quieter resource for pupils with additional support needs, arriving at a moment when close to half of Scotland’s schoolchildren now fall into that category. One of those two stories is getting most of the attention. The other explains why this rollout matters more than a clever creative concept usually does.

A Rhino, a Gorilla and the Physics Teenagers Ignore

Transport Scotland commissioned Leith, the Edinburgh advertising agency behind the campaign, to solve a specific problem: teenagers who feel completely at ease around traffic. The agency’s research, gathered through digital performance audits, in-school engagement sessions and a review of existing materials, found that young people often feel confident around roads while badly underestimating the physical forces that make them dangerous.

Mechanimals answers that with characters instead of statistics. A vehicle’s mass, speed and stopping distance turn into three animals no teenager would casually approach.

• Elephant – represents mass: heavy and slow to stop, the same way a moving vehicle cannot halt instantly.
• Gorilla – represents speed: fast and unpredictable, closing distance quicker than it looks.
• Rhino – represents momentum: once charging, it cannot stop on the spot, mirroring a car’s stopping distance.

The resource’s own classroom materials put the comparison bluntly, asking pupils whether stepping in front of a car or truck really is so different from stepping in front of a fearsome wild animal. Teachers were involved throughout development, and their feedback pushed the design toward something reusable across years rather than a single one-off lesson.

Why Do Teenagers Underrate Road Danger?

Teenagers tend to rate their own accident risk lower than their peers’, a pattern researchers have documented for decades and one that gets worse, not better, as young people gain confidence and independence on the roads. It is not recklessness in the way adults often assume. It is a mismatch between how safe roads feel and how dangerous they actually are.

A frequently cited study on driver risk perception found that people are excessively and unrealistically optimistic when judging their own accident risk, and that this optimism tends to grow rather than shrink with experience. Separate pedestrian research has found a similar pattern in adolescents specifically: familiarity with roads breeds a sense of safety that the physics does not support. That is precisely the gap Mechanimals is built to close, though there is no independent, published evaluation yet of whether the animal framing changes actual pupil behaviour on the roads. Transport Scotland’s own materials describe the research process behind it in detail; results on real-world impact will take longer to surface.

What the Casualty Numbers Show

The reason Transport Scotland is investing in this at all sits in its own casualty statistics. Children and young adults are hit as pedestrians far more often than adults are, and the gap has not closed in recent years.

Scotland recorded 155 people killed in road collisions in 2023, alongside 1,944 people seriously injured and 4,251 injury collisions overall that year. Children’s own casualty rate across all road modes climbed from 0.54 per thousand in 2021 to 0.65 per thousand in 2023. None of these figures are falling fast enough for Transport Scotland to treat the problem as solved, which is part of why a new secondary resource exists at all.

Nearly Half of Scotland’s Pupils Now Have Additional Support Needs

This is where the story stops being simply about clever creative work. Alongside Mechanimals, Transport Scotland and Leith built a separate resource called Travel Together for pupils with complex additional support needs, developed with direct input from specialists, parents, carers and young people themselves. It includes a lanyard set meant as a simple, tactile prompt that teachers, parents and carers can use out in the real world, not just in a classroom.

That resource is landing in a school system that looks very different from a decade ago. Additional support needs, or ASN, is the term Scottish schools use to cover disabilities, learning difficulties and other conditions requiring extra classroom support.

• 43.0% of all Scottish pupils, 299,445 individuals, were recorded with an additional support need in 2025, a record high, according to 43% of pupils now have an additional support need in the Scottish Government’s own pupil census.
• 22.5% was the equivalent share just a decade earlier, in 2015, when 153,143 pupils were recorded with ASN.
• 95% of pupils with ASN are taught in mainstream classes alongside their peers, not in separate specialist settings.

Put plainly, a road safety lesson aimed at an average Scottish secondary class is now, statistically, a lesson aimed at a room where nearly half the pupils have some recorded additional need. A tactile, repeatable resource is not a nice add-on for that room. It is closer to a requirement.

Collisions on our roads remain one of the main causes of accidental death among children and young people each year. We know early experiences shape future behaviour, so positive road safety attitudes must be reinforced from a young age, in the classroom and at home.

Vicky Karakosta, head of project management at Leith, said that in a statement announcing the launch. She added that free resources are “vital to support young people’s learning and growing independence, helping them build essential life skills to stay safe on our roads.”

A Support System Still Catching Up

The growth in recorded ASN has outpaced the systems meant to support it. Councils across Scotland use different staged assessment models to identify and record additional support needs, and they do not always apply the same categories consistently.

An Audit Scotland briefing found 40 of 76 planned actions in the national additional support for learning action plan had been completed by late 2024, with the remainder due by March 2026. The same briefing noted that some categories, including autism spectrum diagnoses, require specialist assessment before they can even be formally recorded, which slows how quickly a child’s needs get documented in the first place. That is not a criticism of Mechanimals or Travel Together specifically. It is the backdrop those resources now have to work inside, a system still mid-repair while pupil numbers keep climbing.

One Rung in a Ladder That Starts With Ziggy

Mechanimals did not appear from nothing. Road Safety Scotland already runs an age-staged curriculum that starts in early years and works upward, and teachers pushed hard during development for Mechanimals to fit into that ladder rather than sit apart from it.

Younger pupils meet road safety through a character called Ziggy in early learning and P1, then move through further staged resources across primary school before reaching secondary. Mechanimals itself is split further, with one version for the third and fourth stages of secondary and another aimed at the senior phase, so the same animal framework can be revisited and built on rather than taught once and forgotten. That continuity was a specific, repeated request from teachers during the consultation, who wanted a shared language they could return to across a pupil’s entire secondary career rather than a single memorable lesson that fades.

Mechanimals, Travel Together and the supporting classroom materials are now available to every secondary school in Scotland, at no cost to schools.

Frequently Asked Questions

What age groups does Mechanimals cover in secondary school?

Mechanimals is split into two versions inside Scotland’s official road safety curriculum: one aimed at the third and fourth stages of secondary school, roughly S1 to S3, and a separate senior phase version for S4 to S6, so the content can be revisited as pupils get older rather than delivered only once.

What comes before Mechanimals in Scotland’s road safety education?

Younger pupils in Scotland encounter road safety through a character called Ziggy during early learning and P1, followed by further staged resources through the rest of primary school, before Mechanimals takes over once pupils reach secondary.

What is the Travel Together lanyard for?

The lanyard set is a physical, wearable prompt that teachers, parents, carers and young people with complex additional support needs can use in real situations out in the community, not only inside a classroom, reinforcing the same key messages through repetition.

Is there a cost for Scottish schools to use Mechanimals?

No. Mechanimals, the Travel Together resource and the supporting classroom materials are all provided free and are available to every secondary school in Scotland as of this month’s rollout.

How many pupils in Scotland currently have additional support needs?

Scottish Government figures for 2025 put the number at 299,445 pupils, or 43.0% of the total school population, a record high and nearly double the 22.5% recorded just a decade earlier in 2015.