Safe Drive Stay Alive: Educating Oxfordshire students on road safety
Safe Drive Stay Alive: Educating Oxfordshire students on road safety
More than 4,500 sixth-formers and college students will attend Oxfordshire County Council Fire & Rescue Service’s Safe Drive Stay Alive presentation to learn about the devastating impact of being involved in a car crash.
Young drivers (aged 17-24) make up around 1 in 8 drivers on the road but this age group is more than twice as likely to be involved in an incident that results in death or injury on the road
In Safe Drive Stay Alive sessions, emergency service personnel, young survivors and parents who have lost a child tell real-life stories of the devastation caused by dangerous driving. Stories will be brought to life on stage in Oxford to educate young people in Oxfordshire on the importance of being safe on the road.
Andy Ford, Road Safety Manager, Oxfordshire County Council's Fire & Rescue Service, said: “This is a really powerful way to highlight to young people that poor choices as a driver, such as driving a bit too fast for the road conditions, driving with alcohol or drugs inside them, or being distracted by something like a text message can have terrible consequences. All of these factors increase the risk of a collision and not wearing a seatbelt means the odds of being killed or suffering life changing injuries increases enormously. As well as a message for those in the audience, we would like to remind parents/carers that they have an important role to play. By the time young people begin to learn to drive many of their attitudes are already formed, based on what they’ve observed as a passenger.”
A dramatic and sobering show
The production includes a filmed scenario which shows a group of young people on a night out whose car is involved in a serious crash. As the on-screen drama unfolds, members of the emergency services that are featured in the film step out onto the stage.
The film is then paused while emergency service workers, parents and affected individuals appear on stage to talk about:
- Their real-life experiences of road collision scenes
- What action they would take if the film collision was a real-life experience
- The reactions of the driver and passengers
- The medical implications
- How the trauma of a road collision affects them personally.
Safe Drive Stay Alive”, Kings Centre, Oxford on Tuesday 28th, Wednesday 29th and Thursday 30th November.
Notes to editors:
About Safe Drive Stay Alive
Safe Drive Stay Alive is a partnership between Oxfordshire County Council Fire & Rescue Service, Hampshire Constabulary and Thames Valley Police Joint Roads Policing Unit, South Central Ambulance NHS Trust and Road Safety Officers from councils across the whole Thames Valley area. Since it began in 2005, over 150,000 young drivers have been educated by the campaign. This month, the production will be seen by over 23,000 young people across Thames Valley and Hampshire.
Data on road casualties in Oxfordshire:
In 2016, almost 1 in 3 of all road casualties on Oxfordshire roads involved a young driver (17-24 years old). So far, this year (data up to end September 2017), there is a reduction in percentage of young car drivers involved compared to recent years but worrying increase in moped/motorcyclist casualties in this age group
