Students have ideas of their own
From placing advisory notices about road safety issues on school cars to a Great Cardboard Car Race, Northland secondary school students are joining their counterparts around the country this month to offer ideas that will promote road safety issues.
Students taking part in the SADD (Students Against Dangerous Driving) SAFER September campaign hope their activities will influence all New Zealanders to drive safely, and have an impact on reducing road trauma.
SADD national leader Angharad Yearbury-Murphy, a year 12 student at Tauraroa Area School, said she hoped the activities they were planning would have a real impact.
“SAFER September is really important to me.
“It gives us a great opportunity to spread awareness in our communities and really get people involved,” she said.
“I’ve really enjoyed seeing all my fellow students working together to make their cardboard cars for the Great Cardboard Race, and really motivating themselves to be a part of the activities.”
The Great Cardboard Car Race, at Tauraroa Area School on Friday week (September 13), will have students complete an obstacle course under different conditions to demonstrate the effects of speed on safety.
As of August 25 this year, there had been 11 road deaths among 16 to 19-year-olds, a drop of almost 50 per cent for the same period in each of the last four years.
However, young drivers are still over-represented in some areas, such as fatal crashes involving cell phone use, 30 per cent of which over the last five years involved a teenage driver.
SADD national manager Donna Govorko says she was very impressed with the SADD groups’ efforts to make a difference to those statistics.
“Having experienced the tragedy of road crashes firsthand as a police officer, it is heartening to experience the passion our SADD students have to help influence all New Zealanders to be safe on our roads,” she said.
“I also applaud the students’ aspiration to help prepare their peers to be safe on our roads heading into summer and the end of the school year.”
AA policy and research national manager Simon Douglas said his organisation was right behind SADD and SAFER September.
“Seeing the number of deaths among young people nearly halve so far in 2019 is heartening, but at the same time, young people are still getting hurt in ways that can be prevented, like not wearing seat belts, driving too fast for conditions, being drunk or drugged behind the wheel, and using a phone [which features] in so many deaths,” he said.
“These messages aren’t just for teens. We can all do more to be safer on our roads in September, and from then on, to help reduce these devastating crashes.”
■ The SADD Charitable Trust was launched in New Zealand more than 30 years ago, and is now active in three-quarters of secondary schools, reaching more than 220,000 young people every year.
It works closely with the NZ Transport Agency, the police, the Automobile Association and local authorities.