Freya Richardson, from Chapelton Primary School, won the overall prize for her innovative design “Why drive a car if you don’t need to go far?”.

She receives £100, an individual trophy and her painting will be used as the illustration for the 2022 South Lanarkshire Road Safety Calendar.

Freya said: “I am delighted that my design has won. I really wasn’t expecting that.

“When I was drawing it, I really wanted to include the dashboard and include as many pairs of legs as I could to make you think about walking.

"I wanted to include as many different pairs of legs as I could to show the diversity of everyone at school.

“The slogan just came to me as we have been discussing sustainability a lot at school, especially as we took part quite a bit because of COP-26.”

Chair of South Lanarkshire Council’s Roads Safety Forum, Councillor Julia Marrs, said: “Huge congratulations to Freya on her success – once again the standard was extremely high this year but her design was a worthy winner.

“It had a very clear message and is one we are always keen to promote – sustainable travel.”

Chair of the council’s Community and Enterprise Resources Committee, Councillor John Anderson, said: “Although as always it was very difficult to pick an overall winner, Freya’s design just had that extra eye-catching appeal that ensured it was well deserving of this year’s award.

“I would like to thank every pupil in each school who took part in this year’s Calendar Competition.

“Their support ensures that the Road Safety Calendar Competition continues to be such a success.”

A total of 99 schools throughout South Lanarkshire took part in this year’s competition. Teachers were asked to send in the best five entries in each year category from their school, resulting in just under 3,000 entries to South Lanarkshire Council’s Traffic and Transportation Section.

These entries were whittled down by the Traffic and Transportation Section and then judged remotely by a panel of councillors, council officials, Scottish Fire and Rescue and police.

Primary 1 and 2 pupils’ designs had to be based on ‘In car safety’, for P3/4 the theme was ‘Safe places to cross and play’, for P5/6 it was ‘Distractions’, for P7 it was ‘Safe and sustainable school travel’ and for secondary pupils it was ‘Learning to Drive’.

The winners of each individual section were also rewarded for their designs and highly commended certificates issued to pupils whose artwork or road safety messaging stood out. All of the winning designs can be viewed on the council website.