Science and Road Safety Program

Best practice road safety education from the experts

The NRMA Science and Road Safety program is delivered free of charge to schools in Sydney, ACT and regional NSW. We’ve already visited over 800 schools and educated over 450,000 children across NSW and ACT since the program launched in February 2014.

This best practice road safety education focusses on increasing the knowledge and skills of students, teachers and parents. The program is mapped to the NSW K-6 PDHPE, English and Science Syllabi.

We increase children’s knowledge to drive changes in their attitudes and behaviours towards road safety through:

• Student workbooks to complete in class and to stimulate teacher led discussion.
• Memorable road safety shows leveraging visual learning and science demonstrations to debunk many of the myths that children have about road safety.
• Increasing students’ knowledge so they are now the experts in road safety within their family and confident to share their knowledge with family and friends.

We support teachers in the classroom with:

• Professional development from road safety and science specialists to increase their knowledge of road safety and the science behind it.
• A teacher pack for use in classroom to support the learnings from the show and act as a guide beyond the program visit.
• Time saved in preparation with quality resources that are mapped to the NSW K-6 syllabus.

We educate parents so they know how to keep their children safe:

• We extend the reach of the program by inviting parents to attend the road safety shows at their child’s school to increase their knowledge.
• We share the information covered in the shows with parents through a parent road safety insert that is included in very student workbook.
• We engage the wider school community beyond our visit with a gate sign that summarises the key road safety information.

We teach the WHAT, WHY and HOW of road safety

By the time children start school, most are given the responsibility of putting on their own seatbelt and strapping on their own bike helmet, yet few children actually know how to do this correctly which puts them at risk.

We explicitly teach children the following road safety information each accompanied with a tangible safety strategy that they can employ to keep themselves and others safe;

• What seatbelts do in the event of a crash - Why they need to be positioned correctly - How to correctly fit their seatbelts themselves.
• What helmets do in the event of a crash - Why they need to be positioned correctly - How to correctly fit their own helmet.
• What helmet is needed for specific activities - Why they are designed differently - How to choose the correct bike helmet for their activity.
• What happens to a helmet in a crash - Why a helmet can only survive one crash - How they can properly store their helmet prevent damage.
• What is the safety door (rear and opening onto the footpath) - Why they should only use this door when entering and exiting a car - How to access the safety door even when they are not seated next to it.
• What are the dangers of sitting in the front seat- Why they should choose to sit in the back - How they can minimise the impact of airbags if they need to sit in the front seat.
• What to do before crossing a road - Why it is important to hold hands - How to cross the road safely.
• What it takes to concentrate on driving a car - Why it is important not to cause a distraction to your driver - How to prepare for a trip to reduce the need to distract the driver.
• What is inattentional blindness - Why this is dangerous for pedestrians - How human brains processes information when engaged in a task.

We use data to measure the effectiveness of the program

Student pre and post program online assessment shows a

• 56% increase in students’ ability to recognise unsafe road behaviours.
• 61% of students have used a safe strategy they learned.
• 50% have shared a safety strategy with their family or friends.

Teacher feedback surveys tell us that we are helping teachers in the classroom with 90% of teachers telling us they have more skills and confidence in teaching road safety than before we visited.

We use experts to create and deliver our program

• NRMA education and road safety experts create, implement and constantly review the program to ensure effectiveness and quality.
• NRMA partners with science experts from Fizzics Education to deliver the science shows in schools.