The government's public health advisers called yesterday for a 20mph speed limit in residential areas to save 13,000 children a year from death or injury.

The Health Development Agency said its research showed speed restrictions could avert two-thirds of injuries to children on the roads and save billions of pounds in health and insurance costs.

Paul Streets, the chief executive, said road injuries were responsible for 20% of childhood deaths in England, while road accidents put more children into hospital than any other kind of accident. The toll from road accidents was one of the most glaring examples of health inequality, he added, since children from poorer homes were five times more likely to be victims than those living in prosperous families.

"It's shocking that in 21st-century England children are more likely to die because of the social class they are born into," he said.

Professor Mike Kelly, the agency's director of research, said that if a vehicle was driven at 20mph, one child of every 20 hit would die, but the figure would be 17 out of 20 if the vehicle was driven at 40mph.