News : Award winning road safety training protects Springfields’ apprentices
In the drive to raise road safety awareness amongst young people, apprentices and graduates at Springfields Fuels Limited have been chosen to take part in the latest phase of a project for an award-winning programme to assess its impact in the community.
Their continued involvement in the programme was announced by David Jamieson, Director of RoadSafe, who was at Springfield's to present the Prince Michael of Kent International Road Safety Award for Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety Wasted Lives campaign.
Wasted Lives is a highly cost-effective, flexible learning programme reaching 16-19 year old pre and new drivers across Lancashire. It successfully challenges attitudes and influences behaviour of young drivers and their passengers, by adopting a completely fresh, innovative peer to peer learning style. Its long-term protective impact has been scientifically evaluated and 73% of participants, three months after the course, now take fewer risks because they understand the potential consequences.
The Springfields apprentices have been chosen to measure the life saving impact of Wasted Lives. The course is thought to be a major break through in road safety for this age group, with three out of four participants taking fewer risks because they understand the potential consequences. Now, Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety wants to see if this actually prevents crashes and will compare the injury rate of the apprentices to that of the national average for young drivers.
”We have 82 apprentices and Health and Safety on site is a major part of their training,” said Graham Hall, Engineering Training Manager at Springfields Fuels Limited. “However, to have a skilled and sustainable workforce – which is a key part to any organisations continuing success – we must keep them safe off-site as well. The national road statistics speak for themselves and we are delighted to be a part of this very important study.”
Linda Sanderson, Communications Manager for Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety said: “The national statistics make dire reading with one in three road deaths involving drivers under 25 and one in five new drivers crashing within the first 6 months of passing their test resulting in thousands of serious injuries every year. We know Wasted Lives successfully challenges attitudes and influences behaviour of young drivers and their passengers but if we can link this to fewer injuries during their most vulnerable time on the road, then this course should be made available nationally.
The innovative programme scooped the top Prince Michael International Road Safety Award for educating drivers in October and County Councillor Keith Young, Cabinet Member for Highways and Transport, Lancashire County Council showed the award to the apprentices and spoke to them about the importance of staying alive to fulfil their business and engineering dreams. He said: “So many car crashes are totally avoidable but what you can’t get away from is the sheer devastation caused and total waste of skill, talent and young life that is so often the result. By taking part in this study, not only will you be safer on the roads to help realise your goals, but you may be helping future generations stay safe as well.”
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