Collision was commissioned by South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service and The Safer Roads Partnership to reduce the number of road collisions involving young drivers and passengers and raise awareness of the wider dangers on and around our roads.
Every year, South Yorkshire firefighters are called to the scene of hundreds of road traffic collisions (RTCs), many of which involve young people. These casualties send shock-waves through families and communities yet they are preventable, often occurring for reasons such as driving too fast or overtaking dangerously, driving while using a mobile phone, driving on drink, drugs or while tired, failing to belt up or even, most commonly, as a result of not concentrating or paying attention.
Collision was commissioned by South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service and The Safer Roads Partnership to reduce the number of road collisions involving young drivers and passengers and raise awareness of the wider dangers on and around our roads.
This began with a pilot consultation involving Year 9 students (i.e. 13 or 14 year olds), The purpose was to determine which questions would be most effective at finding out the real attitudes and behaviours of this age group in relation to road safety, as well as gain an understanding of whether road safety is of significant concern to young people in the region.
Of the young people involved in the pilot exercise, 95% didn’t even consider roads as a risk affecting them, while they did cite issues such as knife crime, alcohol and drugs as a real threat despite statistically being at much greater risk from road incidents.
Following the exploratory research, lime went on to consult with 97 further young people, age 13 to 18, from a cross-section of South Yorkshire’s communities. Just over half of those participating in the study were in Year 9, which is important bearing in mind that attitudes are formed well before young people have reached the driving age.
A smaller group of young people from the workshops went on to work with our design team to produce a film addressing the main behavioural drivers highlighted in the consultation. The purpose of the film is to provide a focal point for a series of learning resources that support more detailed classroom discussion by challenging the way young people think about themselves and those around them. Exercises are designed to help them choose different behavioural pathways by examining how people and the context of a situation influences choice. The materials promote a constructive dialogue and introduce transformative approaches to learning in order to ultimately change how certain situations are approached.
The Collision learning programme was designed to frame the issue of road safety in the minds of young people with a number of core activities that draw out key perceptions and attitudes, and further activities to reinforce learning that provides strategies for better-informed decision- making.
Collision is being rolled out to over 100 schools in South Yorkshire.
