Soundbites and images from the fourth session of the 2024 National Road Safety Conference: Speed Dating.
- Speed Dating (15:30 to 16:45)
- Click here to view the agenda
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16.00
Rob Heard, Road Safety & Older Drivers Consultant
Rob Heard is the founder and chairperson of the Older Drivers Forum and the former road safety sergeant for Hampshire and Thames Valley Police.
Rob was in the police force for 30 years and is passionate about road safety. He was an advanced police car driver and motorcyclist and led the Hampshire and thames Valley force’s VIP escort team.
Rob instigated the Older Drivers Forum following a number of serious incidents involving older drivers. After extensive research he saw a real need to help and support older drivers to drive safely for longer.
Click here to read the full bio
Presentation: VR Film for older drivers
Research shows that Older Drivers:
- Need more time to process information
- Make slower decisions and fail to predict hazards as quickly
- Are less likely to speed
- Most collisions occur at right turn like T – junctions
- Eyesight deteriorates and conduct poor or reduced visual searches
- Mobility and head movement reduces as we age
Shifting gears with VR education
This Virtual Reality film is designed to:
- Raise awareness of mature driver issues and how to reduce them.
- Be an engagement tool to facilitate a conversation.
This VR Education addresses four key subjects that as we age may affect our ability to drive safely:
- Impaired vision
- Reduced mobility
- Junctions negotiating
- Importance of hazard perception
The activity
Three different views:
- Watching a person speaking
- Viewing as if they are in the driver’s seat
- Watching situation as an observer
Activity one:
- Introduction
- Eyesight
- Reversing in and out of a driveway – various hazards
- Parking in a car park
- Turning right at a junction
- Debrief – Facilitate conversations
Activity two:
- Introduction
- Roundabout and judging speed
- Commentary Drive – Rural or Urban version
- Conclusion
- Debrief
Reaction/feedback:
- 93% agreed or strongly agreed with this statement: I would recommend the VR film to a friend
- 87% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: I thought the VR film was a really good way of presenting the information
- Positive:
- “Very good. Everyone over 70 should see this”
- “Very interesting way of presenting info!”
- “Very good, especially for us older drivers”
- Negative:
- “Did experience some motion sickness at times, distracted me from watching the film”
- “Swinging round to roundabouts made one feel whizzy”
- “I felt motion sickness”
Conclusions:
- Significant Improvement between Pre and Post intervention on Eyesight and need to take action to enhance their safety on the roads
- The intervention has been positively received by Older Drivers
- Reports of motion sickness (5 cases out of 101 – only 5%)
- These results do not mean VR will always be successful – its use needs to be appropriate to the target group
16.05
Lorna Smith, Safe Road Users Team Leader, Kent CC
Lorna Smith is a qualified teacher who has worked in primary, secondary and adult education. She spent 21 years with Kent police undertaking roles in crash scene management, investigation and was deployed as a family liaison officer for fatal crashes.
Lorna has worked within Kent County Council’s road safety team since 2019 and in that time has been involved in a range of education, training and interventions for the 12 to 24-year-old demographic.
Click here to read the full bio
Presentation: Kent County Council’s Young Driver & Passenger Course
Course content – there are 5 sessions:
- Driving and Seeing
- Speed and Force
- Impairment
- Impulse and Control
- 5 Live (Q&A)
Three phases of evaluation: Evaluation 1&2 looked at the participant’s beliefs
Study 3: 7,614 students
These results indicate that post-course, the participants were less willing to violate. We can say this is a statistically significant finding
16.10
James Mark Taylor, Sustainable Travel Officer, Shropshire Council
James Mark Taylor’s work includes encouraging sustainable travel to schools in Central Shropshire as well as leading on road safety education in the county. He has previous experience of working with school crossing patrols as well as delivering active travel initiatives in primary schools.
Click here to read the full bio
Presentation: Enforcing change in a rural setting: How moving traffic offences powers are changing the school run in Shropshire
Where we are now:
- Shropshire is a commissioning Local Authority, so WSP undertake our design work and Kier do our Highways work
- Predominantly rural county on England-Wales border with around 325000 residents (2021)
- Like many councils we face challenges with school parking
Introducing School Streets:
- School Streets using ANPR approved by cabinet in October 2022
- Six schools selected based on history, LCWIP and county spread
- The project is part funded by ATF4 (£230k construction funding)
- We are using an ETRO to enforce the scheme
- Shropshire Council applied for Moving Traffic Offences (MTO) Powers from DFT and were granted them in July 2023
Setting up MTO powers:
- Worked closely with colleagues to integrate the scheme into existing technologies and processes
- Permits for School Streets were issued through the MiPermit (Chipside) system already in use by Shropshire
- TES supplied our ANPR Cameras
- Applied a Keeper At Date Of Event (KADOE) link with DVLA
- Cameras record a clip, uploads this to the back-office system and a PCN issued if necessary
What challenges have we faced?
- MTO Powers is quite revolutionary for a rural Local Authority
- The process has taken longer than it should – there have been unforeseen hurdles to overcome
- There is an ingrained culture that had to be broken down, and we had to reassure staff of this new way of working
- In our more rural areas, the lampposts weren’t sufficient to hold the weight of the cameras, so we have had to replace lamp columns
- Initial backlash from residents apprehensive of the change
What support have we had?
- Cross-party support of the scheme
- Schools who are trialling the scheme engaged with our team through behaviour change interventions like Modeshift STARS, Living Streets WOW Tracker, Scootability training and road safety education
- Lots of support online and featured in local press coverage
- Schools coming forward to sign up for future rounds
16.15
MPC Ian Harvey, Devon & Cornwall Police
MPC Ian Harvey has been a police officer with Devon & Cornwall Police for 27 years. He is the Force’s motorcycle instructor and has over 21 years of roads’ policing experience.
His current role also includes motorcycle casualty reduction for the two counties, with Ian overseeing several new and innovative schemes launched this year in a bid to drastically reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured in motorcycle collisions.
Presentation: Bespoke Hazard Perception Simulator Programme
The simulator benefits:
- Currently used by 52 police forces around the world for police training
- First of its kind in the UK for public use
- No time or weather restrictions
- Real motorcycle on fully movable base with three screens
- Replicate any given scenario or incident, targeting ksi themes
- Road conditions and highway code changes
- Various hazards in different settings
- Varying Motorcycles Auto / Manual
How do you place a new rider in precarious or dangerous situations with NO risk??
- Riding in the dark
- Muscle memory, controls, gears
- Awareness of dual carriageways/motorways
- Various environmental changes, wind, rain etc
- Awareness for car drivers!!
- Instructional benefits – car or mc
- Hazard Perception awareness with no physical risk
- Improved education and engagement
- Can be moved to any force area or event
- Early intervention training 16+ yrs old Schools, colleges etc
- Technology targeted at an age group where the age demographic is tech savvy (xbox/playstation generation)
- Safer riding course (Bikesafe) develop for delivery in September Not weather dependant
- Potential to add into a Diversion from prosecution scheme
- Could these be added into rider training establishments to coincide with the current H/P awareness package?
What will you do differently in your riding as a result of the simulator experience you have just completed?
- Keep looking at my mirrors more
- Press both brakes
- Look out more
- Spot potential hazards sooner
- Change speed dependent on road conditions
- Etc
16.20
Julia Francis, Senior Road Safety Officer, Hampshire County Council
Before joining Hampshire County Council’s Road Safety Team, Julia Francis was a Primary School Teacher.
She was employed to launch and develop the Junior Road Safety Officer scheme in Hampshire, which initially meant planning, leading and evaluating the two training days and monitoring the scheme in schools.
Click here to read the full bio
Presentation: How has online learning helped us develop our primary road safety education?
Online learning – how did it happen?
- Pandemic – lead us to make these changes
- Reinventing ourselves – unable to visit schools
- Working from home – needing to justify ourselves
- The audience were still out there
- Changes forced – but exciting
Pre-pandemic primary education
- Streets Ahead – Year 2 pedestrian training
- In-person training
- Material printing
- Administration
Junior Road Safety Officer scheme
- In-person training
- 12 staff members
- Termly newsletter
Post-pandemic primary education
Year 2 workshops
- 165 schools attended
- Approximately 7000 students
RSO training – 2-hour online training – 5 dates offered
- RSO forum meetings
- Year 5 & 6 transition workshop – presenting to approximately 7000 students
Campaigns
- Walk to School Week competition
- Poster campaigns – be bright, cycle safety and seatbelt safety
- Your Time to Shine
- Termly newsletters
- Parent transition newsletter
Pre-pandemic secondary
- 3x Senior Road Safety Officers delivered in person:
- Year 7&8 assemblies
- Year 9 workshops
- Termly newsletters
Next steps:
- Develop sessions for each year group
- Record online lessons – allowing more flexibility for schools
- Online parent workshop
- Online INSET training – teaching road safety as part of the curriculum
- Gain more ‘subscribers’ to newsletters
- Update JRSO training, with more examples of JRSOs work
- Develop further evaluations – pre and post JRSO training
16.25
Sharon Hilton, Warwickshire Road Safety Partnership & Alan Hiscox, BHS
Sharon Hilton works collaboratively with partners to design and deliver initiatives, campaigns and other interventions to help Warwickshire Road Safety Partnership achieve its ambitious target to reduce casualties by 50% by 2030.
Alan Hiscox is the strategic lead for the implementation and management of the BHS’s charitable objectives regarding safety for horse riders.
Click here to read the full bios
Presentation: Making roads safer for Warwickshire’s equestrian riders
Dead Slow campaign – running for nearly six years (Pass horses wide and slowly)
Messages surrounding horses in the Highway Code not well known.
Jan 2023: horse boards put in in Warwickshire
Targeted areas with high near miss numbers – and areas with horse yards, stables etc
Advertised via social media – horse groups
Still work to do!
16.35
James Evans, Founder, FirstCar
James Evans is the Founder of FirstCar, a company born out a sixth form common room in Kent in 2002 with the sole objective of keeping young drivers safe on the roads.
Over the past 20 years in the road safety sector, James has created and developed dozens of highly successful resources, interventions, and events, including ICE Live, Young Driver Focus, The Honest Truth and FirstCar magazine, which is used by the DVSA to engage 1.8 million new drivers each year.
Presentation: Driving instructors – an undervalued touch point with young drivers? Not any more
The power of context – It’s not about the output. It’s about the outcome.
- Group dynamic vs 1-2-1.
- Moments of high interest and high engagement.
- It’s all in the chat.
- Who has the best touch-points with new drivers?
- Schools: peer discussion.
- Parents: leverage.
- ADIs: 1-2-1 discussion.
What is The Honest Truth?
A simple way to deliver relevant road safety education at one of the most teachable moments.
Giving ADis the tools they need
Embedding road safety education seamlessly within driving lessons.
- No learner left behind.
- Ending self-selection.
- Harnessing technology.
- No marketing required.
Inbuilt onboarding and training with ongoing support.
- Onboarding film.
- Training film.
- Verification quiz.
- Quarterly webinars.
- Facebook group.
- Direct phone/email contact
Co-creation & peer education
Two Minute Truths provoke thought and discussion.
Don’t take our word for it:
“had one girl going to test last week and as soon as she got in the car, she picked her phone up which she’s never done before. So that was a prompt to watch the video on phones and that worked so well.”
“This young lady was prone to pushing the gas too much so just before her test we had a couple of minutes to watch the speeding video, that did help a lot with her test. She got a first-time pass with 1 fault.”
The cost of education
Delivering one Truth to a learner costs just 25p.
ADI fee = £100pa.
x40 pupils pa = £2.50 per learner.
x10 Truths per pupil = 25p per Truth.
16.40
Anna Southall, Engagement & Campaigns Manager, West Mercia Police Road Safety Team & James Mark Taylor, Sustainable Travel Officer, Shropshire Council
Anna Southall has worked in the West Mercia Police Road Safety Team since 2012.
Her role has involved managing and developing road safety engagement, campaigns and training courses across Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire.
James Mark Taylor’s work includes encouraging sustainable travel to schools in Central Shropshire as well as leading on road safety education in the county. He has previous experience of working with school crossing patrols as well as delivering active travel initiatives in primary schools.
Click here to read the full bio
Presentation: Digitising Greenlight: A new delivery approach to 16-18 road safety education in Shropshire
Why was Greenlight developed?
- Developed from a need to address KSIs involving 16–24-year-olds across Worcestershire and Herefordshire
- Worked with LA and FRS partners to create a new programme
- Continuous evaluation undertaken
How is Greenlight delivered?
- Over the years we’ve adapted the workshop to include BCTs, changes to legislation and delivery methods during COVID
- We’ve delivered Greenlight to 50,000 young people in Herefordshire and Worcestershire so far
Road safety education in Shropshire
- Road safety education was delivered on Shropshire Council’s behalf by WSP from 2010 to 2023
- Output predominantly focused on primary schools
- Young driver and passenger education delivered on request
- Reviewed this ETP output and launched a new service in 2024 with an aim of targeting a greater number of road user types
Collaboration:
- After the review we approached West Mercia Police to collaborate on a Shropshire version of Greenlight
- This would enable consistent messaging to be delivered across the three counties for the first time
- A decision was made to adapt the 2020 digital workshop by updating the content to better reflect road users, types and changes to legislation
- We chose a digital format as this enables a cost-effective, accessible and flexible ongoing delivery model which best reflects the context of Shropshire
- Filmed in July 2024 and rolled out from September 2024
16.45
Heidi Duffy, Facilitator, National Young Rider Forum & Fay Cannon, Coordinator, Warwickshire Road Safety Partnership
Heidi Duffy MBE is passionate about preventing road death and serious injury and has worked for many years in both Police Traffic and Road Safety Partnership roles.
Heidi is currently the facilitator for the National Young Rider Forum and the Shiny Side Up Partnership, both motorcycle casualty reduction groups, as well as working for Nottinghamshire Police in their Serious Collision Investigation Unit.
Fay Cannon works collaboratively with partners to design and deliver initiatives, campaigns and interventions to help Warwickshire Road Safety Partnership achieve its ambitious target to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on Warwickshire’s roads by 50% by 2030.
Presentation: Young Riders – What’s your problem?
What is a young rider?
- A young rider is aged between 16 to 24 years
- NYRF focus is on young and novice motorcyclists aged between 16 and 24 years.
Do you have a problem in your area?
- The data is expressed as rates calculated as the number of young riders injured in each region per 100,000 in the local population aged 16 to 24 years.
- South of England, particularly in London- 661 rider casualties per 100,000 young people.
- The Southeast, the Southwest and the East of England- 450 to 560 young rider casualties per 100,000 young people.
- The East Midlands, West Midlands, Yorkshire & Humberside, Northeast, Northwest and Wales – 150 to 300 young rider casualties per 100,000 young people.
- Scotland has the lowest casualty rate of 106 young rider casualties per 100,000 young people.
- All areas of the UK have a young rider casualty problem so let’s work together to tackle that problem, starting today!
Films!
- These films cover important highway code topics such as highway code hierarchy, speed limits, stopping distances, traffic signals, keep left bollards and of course junctions.
- They were produced by NYRF working in partnership with Koala Television and were made possible with a road safety grant from GEM Motoring Road Safety.
- They are aimed at the youngest, least experienced riders at the lower age of 16 to 18 years and GIG riders where English is not their first language and their knowledge of the highway code, road traffic law and the layout of UK roads is poor.
16.50
Darren Divall, Regional Road Safety Manager, Transport for West Midlands
Darren Divall’s role at TfWM is to enable, support and facilitate road safety improvements across the West Midlands Combined Authority region. As Lead Coordinator for the 16 Regional Road Safety Partnership organisations, Darren ensures delivery of a robust and fit for purpose strategic approach aimed at achieving a 50% reduction in the number of killed and seriously injured casualties by 2030.
Click here to read the full bio
Presentation: Road Safety’s Contribution to the Broader Transport Policy
Local Transport Plan:
- Statutory transport plan covering the 7 constituent local authorities
Challenges – Accessibility
- 63% of West Midlands journey are made by car, and many of them single occupancy.
- 27% of households have no access to a car.
- 85% of journeys are not made to our strategic centres.
- Between 2008 and 2018, over 200,000 fewer residents were able to access Birmingham City Centre by bus within 45 minutes as a consequence of congestion, increased level of on-street parking, and other factors.
Challenges – Health
- 57 lives were lost on our roads in 2022, and around 950 people suffer from serious, sometimes life-changing injuries each year.
Challenges – Places
- Traffic and parked vehicles can limit the opportunities to use streets for wider functions and harm “quality of place”.
- Two thirds of Green Paper respondents felt that levels of traffic on local roads were now a problem.
- Recent TfWM engagement found that 72% of residents considered on-street/inconsiderate parking an issue.
- Need to deliver 130,000 new homes over the 10 years.
- Nearly a quarter of new developments are still being built outside TfWM’s access standards.
Challenges – Decarbonisation
Challenges – Cost of Living
- ECONOMIC COST IS SIGNIFICANT:
- After housing, transport is the next biggest household cost.
- 23% of ALL households struggled with their usual bills in ’22, spending less on non-essential items by 71%.
16.55
Gareth Evans, Director of Strategy and Business Development, EMEA
Gareth Evans is the Director of Strategy and Business Development for EMEA at HAAS Alert. He is responsible for leading their expansion from North America, bringing Digital Alerting to the forefront of Mobility Safety in Europe.
Click here to read the full bio
Presentation: Improving safety on our roads
Safety Cloud streams real-time digital alerts to motorists and connected cars through in-vehicle screens and mobile devices, allowing drivers more time to make safe maneuvers earlier.
- No one can solve road safety on their own. Collaboration and adoption is key.
- What can be perceived as the future, or the past, is actually the present. 20 year old vehicles and 50 years old infrastructure coexists with automated cars and V2X technology right now.
- The role of the private sector and innovators is to constantly education and update the public sector – but the public sector and government funded network have to be open to learn, change and deploy at a faster pace
17.00
Annabelle Priest, Road Safety Officer, Devon and Somerset Fire Rescue Service
Annabelle Priest works for the road safety team at Devon and Somerset Fire Rescue Service. She co ordinates the Learn2Live partnership which consists of multiple organisations, including 999 services and local councils. Learn2Live runs road safety education events for 16-18 year olds in Devon, Somerset and Cornwall and are an active part of Vision Zero South West.
Click here to read the full bio
Presentation: Introducing the NFCC Young Road User Education Toolkit
Delivering nationally consistent young driver education that is proven to be effective is a huge challenge
The toolkit:
- Evidence based and evaluated interventions
- Free, varied complete resources with support for all 999 services and LAs
- Interventions to educate 16-24 year olds on driver/passenger road safety
- Assessed by a third party panel to ensure high quality
Toolkit panel:
- Dr Elizabeth Box (RAC Foundation)
- Ian Edwards (NVC Ltd)
- Tanya Fosdick (Agilysis)
- Neale Kinnear (AON)
- Natasha Neale (Staywise/ Nottingham FRS)
- Observer: CFO Dan Quin ( Surrey FRS/NFCC)
- Co-ordinator: Devon and Somerset Fire Rescue Service annabellepriest@dsfire.gov.uk
17.05
Peter Cattel, Head of Technical Sales, Clearview Intelligence
Peter Cattell has been part of the Clearview Intelligence team for nearly 10 years having previously worked across various facets of the Intelligent Transport Sector.
Presentation: Saving Lives by Saving Money
What are retro-reflective road studs?
- Rely on vehicle headlights to illuminate them
- Reflect headlights back, towards the driver
- Only visible if headlights are shining on them
- Limited to the range of the headlights (90m)
- Reflectivity degrades over time
Active road studs save lives:
- 10x better visibility than traditional retro-reflective studs
- Visible in adverse weather
- Solar-powered
- 4x longer lifetime than traditional studs
- Proven to reduce night-time collisions by over…
Vision Zero & Net Zero
SolarLite road studs can be used as a safety aid when streetlights are not appropriate, or when a road authority may want to turn them off.
- There are many ways SolarLite can improve sustainability
- Reduced emissions from manufacture
- Reduced emissions from Installation
- No need for large installation vehicles
- No need for ducting, trenching, cabling, or concrete
- No need to disturb the hedgerows
- Reduced emissions from operations
17.10
Olly Samways, Sales Director, Westcotec
Olly Samways is Sales Director for intelligent traffic safety systems manufacturer Westcotec. Olly started at Westcotec almost 10 years ago as an apprentice in highway electrical engineering, moving up quickly through the company before finding his true vocation in the sales and marketing department.
Is There a Future for Vehicle Activated Signs (VAS)?
To follow…
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