The NRMA is expanding its free road safety education program to high schools across the Hunter and Central Coast regions ahead of the busy holiday season.
The NRMA’s successful Live. Learn. Drive. program educates students in years 10-12 about road safety issues they may encounter on the road and empowers them to make safe driving choices to reduce the road toll for young drivers, our most vulnerable road users.
Since launching the program in 2015 the NRMA has visited more than 250 schools and educated almost 35,000 high school students. This year alone the program has reached more than 1,000 local Hunter students with capacity to reach many more.
According to the NSW Centre for Road Safety, 65 young people lost their lives on Hunter roads between 2014 and 2018 with over three-quarters of those male.
NRMA Educator Christine McKenna said working with regional communities to improve road safety was a priority.
“One young life lost is one too many and that’s why we are so passionate about expanding our high school road safety program to reach more students and respond to a clear community need,” Ms McKenna said.
“As we edge closer to the summer break we know that many learner drivers will utilise their holidays to increase their logbook hours or take road trips with friends for the first time.
“By engaging with students as we enter the holiday season we are able to bring various real life road safety issues front-of-mind along with providing safety strategies that they can deploy in situations where they feel at risk.
“Empowering young people to understand their responsibility as independent road users at this crucial and vulnerable time in their lives equips them to make safe decisions, which is vital to reducing the road toll,” Ms McKenna said.
Josh Vine, Head of PDHPE at Maitland Christian School said partnering with experts at the NRMA added weight to the school’s road safety education efforts.
“It is refreshing to see a positive spin on tackling road safety because most people are safe drivers, it’s just a small minority that take risks. I like any approach that empowers students to turn away from stupid decisions,” Mr Vine said.
“The interactivity of the program allows students to openly discuss road safety and own the fact that it’s not cool to take risks while giving them access to what safe driving looks like and strategies to protect themselves, their passengers and other road users.”
Early bird bookings for school year 2020 are now open.
