Thursday, 8 June 2023: The NRMA is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Science and Road Safety Program educating over 400,000 students in 913 primary schools across NSW and the ACT.
The NRMA’s flagship education program teaches children about all things road safety from seatbelts to booster seats, through to helmets and distractions. The 10th anniversary event will be held tomorrow at St Anthony’s Primary School Girraween.
This program uses experts to educate children, engage parents and upskill teachers through a range of tailored resources to create a positive impact in that school community, while providing a fun and memorable learning experience for students.
The program first began in 2014 and is tailored to use fun and interactive tools to teach primary school children about staying safe on the roads. This includes:
- The Egg Crash Test: Using eggs as crash test dummies to demonstrate the importance of wearing a seatbelt.
- Driver Distraction: Two children are invited on stage to participate in a skill tester game setup under a high pressure environment with the audience watching, keeping score, and making loud noises to distract.
- Inattentional Blindness: This program is used for the older students to prepare them for travelling independently as a pedestrian. One student has headphones in and plays a game on their phone while walking straight across the stage with distractions around them.
Analysis of the program over the last 10 years found:
- 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.
- 90% of teachers felt the program helped them in the classroom with more skills and confidence in teaching road safety.
NRMA Education Program Manager Christine McKenna said the impact of educating children about road safety could not be underestimated.
“For almost a decade the NRMA has led the way in ensuring that children understand the key road safety risks and the sensible, safe and easy steps they can take to keep themselves and others safe,” Ms McKenna said.
“Sadly there are still far too many deaths on our roads and we know that education plays such an important role in increasing awareness and changing behaviours, in particular amongst at risk groups such as children and young people.
“Road safety is everyone’s responsibility and this program empowers children to be advocates for positive change in their own community. From 2017-2021, 49 children who were pedestrians or passengers between the ages of 5-16 were killed and 2089 were injured.
“The NRMA is so proud of the positive impact that this program has had on students in NSW and the ACT and we are looking forward to continuing to expand, evolve and educate even more students with this program over the next decade”.
