August 2012, Issue 17 RSE newsletter A new Trans-Tasman Commitment to Saving Young Lives Message from Terry Birss CEO/Managing Director The RYDA road safety education program for novice drivers and passengers was initiated by Rotary in Australia in 2001 and became established in New Zealand during 2007. RYDA now operates in four Rotary Districts in New Zealand and to date over 26,000 students in New Zealand have received the potentially life-saving messages delivered by the RYDA Program. As recently implemented with the Australian organisation, RYDA New Zealand Limited has been re-branded to Road Safety Education Limited. The name change better reflects the mission of the organisation in helping to reduce youth road trauma. Road Safety Education Limited in both Australia and New Zealand will continue to provide our core road safety education initiative, the RYDA Program. More than 50,000 students now attend the RYDA Program annually in Australia and New Zealand. Increasing demand for road safety education will also see a suite of programs provided to schools so that the RYDA Program becomes part of a broader, consistent sequential learning program for high school students; not just a one day program. This will result in improved educational outcomes for students as we work together to build a road safe community. A recent study on adolescent health produced by the medical journal The Lancet analysed the biggest risks to young people globally. A league table of road deaths showed that New Zealand had the fourth highest rate of road deaths among young men behind the US, Greece and Portugal. Our community more to ensure that our must do young people are better prepared before they get behind the wheel of A CAr Through the delivery of a well researched, evidence-based education resource, Road Safety Education is totally focussed on providing practical life saving information for young people at the beginning of the driving lives - in short, achieving best practice. Management of the RYDA Program under the one organisational structure of Road Safety Education Limited, headquartered in Sydney and with offices in Auckland, Melbourne and Brisbane, will bring great synergy to delivery of our road safety messages and help to make our roads a safer place, on both sides of the Tasman.
Program Facilitator s Manual - 2nd Edition RSE s commitment to best practice is well established with a process of review and improvement that is unequalled in the community-based road safety education sector. It has only been two years since the last update of the RYDA Program and RSE is now ready to release the next edition. The re-writing of a road safety education program as complex as the RYDA Program takes considerable time and effort. In the first instance, RSE reviewed the feedback from teachers and students who have attended the RYDA Program in the past. This feedback is collected from venues across Australia and New Zealand. Focus groups were conducted with students who validated the results found in the surveys collected on the day of the Program. The literature and key stakeholder groups such as driving instructors, Police and support agencies for survivors of crashes were consulted. Individual sessions were pilot tested; evaluated and adjusted as required. Draft manuals were distributed to every Transport, Education, Police, Health and Youth Affairs Government Minister in Australia and New Zealand for feedback. This feedback was reviewed and included where appropriate. There is a significant cost to this commitment cost in research and development; cost in production of the Manual and associated resources; cost in the production of new training videos; cost in the training and skill development of facilitators on the new content. But through this significant investment, we can be sure that the RYDA Program remains relevant and up to date. How many other community based road safety programs can make the same claim? Facilitator s Manual Hazards, Distractions & Risk: Statistics and scenarios detailing common crash types were removed to allow a more focussed discussion on distractions. Students look closely at how all distractions (manual, visual and cognitive) can effect a driver s reaction time and ability to respond to hazards, devising strategies (as drivers and passengers) to manage and eliminate them. What s New in the 2nd Edition All six sessions of the RYDA Program underwent in-depth review and update. The major changes can be seen in four of the sessions. My Wheels: A more focussed session with fewer topics further develops the key messages of choosing and maintaining a safe vehicle. Crash Survivor: The introduction was expanded from simply looking at the effects of traumatic brain injury to a discussion on serious injury in general, including brain and spinal injury - how do these injuries occur, what are the long term effects and how these injuries change a crash survivor s life forever. Road Choices: This session, routinely delivered by a member of the Police uses the video Remembering Genevieve to frame a discussion on consequences of road choices - emotional, legal and financial. Road Choices was updated to extend the conversation on the personal and emotional ramifications, providing a stronger platform for the other topics in the session. Minor updates and changes were made to Stopping Distances and Plan B.
The Year in Review 2011-12 was another year of significant achievements and important developments at RSE full details will be published in our Concise Annual Report, however following are some highlights from the year. The name of our organisation changed from RYDA Australia Limited to Road Safety Education Limited to better reflect our mission in helping to reduce youth road trauma. A total of 50,000 students attended the RYDA Program in Australia and New Zealand a 5% increase on the previous year. Over 250,000 students have now attended RYDA in Australia and New Zealand since the program was established in 2001. An additional eleven RYDA venues were established in Australia, taking the total number of Australian venues to 75. New venues included Springvale in Victoria, Scone and Singleton in NSW, Joondalup (at the WA Police Academy) north of Perth and Campbelltown in South Australia. An additional three venues were established in New Zealand, that being Paeroa, Blenheim and Greymouth. The Second Edition of the RYDA Facilitator s Manual was developed in consultation with road safety education authorities across Australia and New Zealand. We implemented new Best Practice guidelines for delivery of the RYDA road safety education program to ensure that RYDA is benchmarked against what research indicates will produce the best outcome for students. We established a partnership with the Fit to Drive (f2d) Foundation in Victoria to help deliver a sequential learning program to Victorian senior secondary school students. A new three module RSE training program for RYDA facilitators was established to ensure that we maintain a high standard of skill and competency with all facilitators delivering the RYDA road safety education messages. The NSW Minister for Roads and Ports, the Hon Duncan Gay MLC hosted our inaugural Road Safety Education luncheon at Parliament House. Our partnership with Rotary was strengthened with regular full page articles on RSE published in the Rotary Down Under Magazine circulated to 42,000 members in 1,366 Rotary Clubs in Australia and New Zealand. The RYDA organisation in New Zealand was re-branded and integrated into the one organisational structure of Road Safety Education Limited, headquartered in Sydney and with offices in Auckland, Melbourne and Brisbane, bringing great synergy to the delivery of our road safety messages on both sides of the Tasman. We announced a suite of new programs provided to schools so that the RYDA Program becomes part of a broader, consistent sequential learning program for high school students to provide better educational outcomes for students as we work together to build a road safe community.
making the Rounds with An Ongoing Commitment to Road Safety A Teacher s Perspective This comic strip was drawn by Zach from Manly Selective School who was inspired by RYDA s messages to submit an article to his school newspaper Mara Spessot, a teacher from Manly Selective School on Sydney s Northern Beaches has been attending the RYDA Program with her school since their first visit in 2002. After her latest visit, Mara said: I ve seen many changes over the years, all for the better. The PowerPoint presentations are excellent, and the varied presenters style and presentations made it interesting for the students. The colour coded bracelets and folders for the teachers are excellent. It gives the students a funky reminder and a point of reference to do further research. Overall an excellent program that has improved and changed with the times. It is an important opportunity for students to come to grip with some very important information in a real and effective format. A must for all senior students. A Community Response Second to None In New Zealand the Districts of Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough are working collectively to tackle a very real community issue, that being young drivers dying unnecessarily on our roads. Car crashes are the leading cause of death amongst our youth (15-24 years), highlighted locally with the sad fact that 7 young people lost their lives in the Nelson area over a short period of time. The ripple effect of such trauma on local roads is wide spread with many people in the Tasman region directly affected by the tragedies. Nelson City Council, Transport and Road Safety Advisor, Margaret Parfitt, said they had had enough of the fatal crashes especially when there were often reoccurring factors such as inexperience, speed, alcohol and drugs, which could be prevented. The end result has been the introduction of a RYDA Youth Road Safety Week comprising of seven consecutive RYDA days presented to 15-17 year olds. The 2012 RYDA Youth Road Safety Week held earlier in the year was a great success with a total participation of over 1,000 students from nine participating schools. The numbers suggest that approximately 60% of the total Year 11 roll in the area are receiving this much needed road safety education, a number destined to grow.
NSW Police Out in Force to Support RYDA The RYDA Program has long enjoyed the support of the dedicated Police Authorities. This was never more evident than when members of the NSW School Liaison Police (SLP) put aside a morning to attend a tailored facilitator training program designed to enhance their facilitation skills and familiarise members with the new RYDA content. As part of the commitment of NSW Police to effective preventative policing, the NSW School Liaison Police (SLP) unit was established around six years ago to help build relationships between police, students and all high schools across the state. Today there are approximately 40 School Liaison Police (SLP) strategically located to support all public, catholic and independent high schools in NSW. Each year the NSW School Liaison Police participate in over 225 RYDA Program days at 30 venues located in all major metropolitan and regional centres - the dedication and active involvement of members from the NSW SLP team greatly enhances the road safety education messages delivered by the RYDA Program. In addition to providing support with the RYDA Program, NSW SLP members are involved with many school based projects including the development of innovative, local approaches to addressing youth crime. SLP members provide a valued resource on crime issues affecting schools from advising Principals on police related issues, to following-up after major incidents at schools. They also participate in school functions and after school events including attending bi-annual Principals forums organised by Youth Liaison Officers. Importantly SLPs also advise on traffic management around schools. The SLP unit has become the public face of the NSW Police in schools and has been very successful in removing barriers and increase the positive relationships between the school community and police. RSE and the NSW School Liaison Police are proud to be working together to create an understanding through the school community that road safety is a community problem and that we all have an individual and collective responsibility for the safety of each other as drivers or passengers.
BOC Goes the Extra Mile for their Staff In an effort to drive home the importance of youth road safety, RSE in partnership with BOC have launched Parent Seminars, which are available to all staff and their families across Australia and New Zealand. These seminars are to better prepare parents and other concerned adults in their support of new drivers. Recently BOC hosted a Parents Seminar at their facility in Torrensville, South Australia. According to Tanya Smerdon, Torrensville Operations Administrator and Parent Seminar organiser, The feedback from participants was great. One BOC staff member attended with her husband and two sons one a recent driver and the other a learner and initially the boys were groaning about coming saying they d seen something like this at school. Afterwards in the car on the way home they commented that the seminar was really good & better than what they d previously seen. RSE and BOC will continue to roll out these workshops across the region, with a view to extending the invite to BOC customers and affiliates later in the year. while driving using a phone dangerous is just as 0.08 as jumping behind the wheel with a blood alcohol content of Driven to Distraction Source: Chris Harris, SMH, August 04, 2012 There s a killer lying on the seat beside you in the car. It s small, fits snuggly in your hand and is increasingly worrying car makers and legislators alike as they try to stop it spreading its harmful influence. It s your mobile phone. And next time you glance at it while driving, you re four times more likely to be involved in a serious crash. And as phones become smarter, we re becoming more addicted to them - well, some of us. Worryingly, it s the younger, more inexperienced but technologically savvy drivers heavily engaged in the growing phenomenon of social media - Facebook and Twitter, for example - who are most at risk. And the problem is only going to get worse as smartphones become more connected to our lives, authorities warn. Victoria s Transport Accident Commission (TAC) released research that shows that more than a third of drivers aged 18 to 25 said they were likely to read a text message while driving and one in five was likely to write one. The road safety body s data reveals that only 15 per cent of young drivers believe using a mobile phone while driving to be extremely dangerous, compared with almost half of older drivers. In NSW alone, the number of mobile phone-related fines handed out to younger drivers has almost quadrupled in the past four years, police say, giving an indication of how fast the problem is growing. We ve had two recent fatalities where the drivers involved have been seen with their heads down texting away [and] their phones have been recovered with half-written text messages on them, the NSW operations manager for Traffic and Highway Patrol Command, Inspector Phillip Brooks, says. Idle time behind the wheel is being viewed as unproductive, and thus an opportunity to maintain contact with the office, home and friends, the TAC says. In addition to talking and texting, many drivers are diverting their attention to more complex tasks such as sending emails and status updates. The director of Monash University Accident Research Centre, Professor Mark Stevenson, says vehicle distractions are getting out of hand as we become more reliant on technologies such as satellite navigation, audio and television systems while digesting important road information. If we re not putting systems in place that prevent a level of information or communication occurring inside the vehicle, then we ve got a global problem, Prof Stevenson says.
RSE s Website Gets an Update As an ever evolving organisation with an organic, ever-changing product and market, Road Safety Education has invested in a major overhaul of its website. In addition to providing information on RSE as an organisation as well as an overview of each of the Programs we offer, the new website, launching in mid August will become a resource hub for anyone wishing to find out more about road safety. Students, teachers, parents and corporates will have a place to go to learn more about the program before they attend, extend the messages learnt from each of the programs in the RSE suite and find useful tips for keeping safe on our roads. The site will also host online training for facilitators and contain support documentation which, in consultation with the RSE team will assist Rotary Clubs to run the RYDA Program in their local area. RSE to Join the Social Network In the coming months RSE will be looking towards establishing an online community, through Facebook, where people can post their thoughts on road safety topics, promoting an ongoing conversation of these important issues. Did you Know... A recent study by the Centre for Cognitive Brain Imaging found that talking on the phone while driving draws approximately 37% of the brain s mental resources away from the task of driving, even when talking on a hands-free device. The findings showed that language comprehension performed concurrently with driving produces a deterioration in driving performance, causing drivers to miss vital visual and audio cues that would help avoid a crash - even when they are not holding or dialling a phone. Craig Lowndes to continue as Suncorp Insurance Road Safety Ambassador Suncorp Insurance is pleased to announce the re-signing of Craig Lowndes as Road Safety Ambassador for a further two years. As part of their commitment to protecting Queenslanders and their way of life, Suncorp Insurance is on a mission to make Queensland Roads Safer. According to Chris Wilton, Executive Manager of Brand Marketing for Suncorp Insurance, Craig Lowndes forms a significant part of their plans. Craig Lowndes has been a terrific Ambassador for Suncorp Insurance over the past few years, and has been integral to the companies Must-Have Safer QLD Roads campaign. Craig s involvement has provided credibility and a significant level of awareness for this very important issue. Craig has helped us to spread the message of Road Safety through a series of Tip s from Team Lowndes television commercials, our Join Team Lowndes road safety events, and our Must Have Safer QLD Roads Facebook page which are all accessible via www.suncorp.com. au/insurance/safer-roads said Chris. Over the next few years, we plan to grow the existing program to make sure people right across the state understand the importance of road safety, and what we can do as individuals to improve this for all of Queensland. Since launching the Road Safety Program last year, Suncorp Insurance has worked with the Queensland Police Service, Road Safety Education Limited, Fatality Free Friday, charity partner Youngcare, and of course Craig Lowndes, to drive road safety awareness and education throughout Queensland.
A Safe System: Expanding the Reach RSE was represented at the 2012 Australasian College of Road Safety National Conference A Safe System: Expanding the reach! which was held in Sydney in mid August for two days. In attendance were road safety researchers and practitioners from around Australia and New Zealand with international representation as well. The annual Conference takes road safety to the highest level of knowledge and implementation, and provides a unique opportunity for road safety practitioners to collaborate, network, and facilitate translation of road safety research and policy into practice. We heard from acclaimed experts in road safety and as described by the conference chair Dr Teresa Senserrick Our keynote speakers will highlight particular gaps in terms of: Aboriginal road users; rural and remote area road safety; technological advances that can help protect at-risk young drivers; and work to improve safety in the heavy vehicle industry. Whilst there were many stand-out presentations, perhaps one of the most pertinent to our work with young people is the keynote address by Dr Anne McCartt, Senior Vice President, Research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Arlington, Virginia. Dr McCartt updated conference delegates on the advances being made in technology and presented the aptly titled presentation Can technology help teens be safer drivers? There is much to be done in this space, but did provide an insight into how technology can help understand better the driving habits of our young drivers; and accordingly frame educational and behavioural interventions to address these issues. We were reminded that there is much to celebrate and the positive impacts that initiatives such as the Graduated Licensing Scheme has had on reducing youth road trauma. At the same time, there is still much that needs to be done. Hot Off the Press Transport for NSW has launched the Road Safety Strategy for New South Wales 2012-2021 draft for consultation. The Strategy outlines a range of proposed solutions to address current and emerging road safety issues. Interested parties can find the document by following the links at www.transport.nsw.gov.au. Feedback is required by 10th September 2012. We thank our partners for their continued generous support Rotary Clubs in Australia (ACT, NSW, QLD, SA, TAS, VIC & WA) & New Zealand In Australia & New Zealand Founding Sponsor In Australia In New Zealand Co-Founding Sponsor Contact Us Australia (ABN 17 110 667 706) Level 2, 10A Julius Avenue North Ryde NSW 2113 T 1300 127 642 F 1300 321 127 E info@rse.org.au New Zealand PO Box 100918, North Shore Auckland 0745 T 021 545 030 E info@rse.org.nz