A research project being led by the RAC Foundation, which sets out to establish the best way to use pre-driver theatre and workshop education to enhance young and novice driver safety, has secured additional funding.
The Pre-driver Theatre & Workshop Education Research (PdTWER) project was launched in October 2019 by Road Safety GB, the RAC Foundation, the National Fire Chiefs Council and Kent Fire and Rescue Service.
It is being conducted in response to interest from organisations involved in delivering this type of intervention, and the wider road safety community across the UK.
The project has been granted additional funding from the DfT (£100k) and the Road Safety Trust (£28k) to support the ground level delivery of the piloting and trial work.
The aim of the PdTWER study is to evaluate whether the content and format of theatre and workshop interventions can help pre-drivers develop effective strategies for coping with road related risk and have an impact on future collision involvement.
The project team will work with a number of local road safety partnerships and fire and rescue services, who are currently delivering these schemes, over a three and a half year period, concluding in February 2023.
However, the piloting and trial work, originally due to take place between Sept 2020 and March 2021, has been delayed by 12 months due to Covid-19.
The research will compare ‘testimonial based interventions’ against ‘research based alternatives’, to determine the most effective way to proceed going forward.
The study is expected to be delivered as a cluster randomised controlled trial, to ensure the highest level of evidence gathering in order to test the effects of the programmes delivered.
Road safety partnerships and fire and rescue services that sign up to the project will be randomly assigned a ‘condition to deliver’, which will be designed and evaluated by Elizabeth Box, head of research at the RAC Foundation, and a PhD research student from Cranfield University.
I do hope the study will examine each of the interventions to ascertain the behaviour change techniques (bcts) that hey do – and don’t – incorporate and evaluate intervention impact in terms of bct presence or absence.
Good luck with the study!
Reference:
FYLAN, F., & STRADLING, S. (2014) Behavioural Change Techniques used in road safety interventions for young people. Rev. Eur. Psychol. Appl., http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erap.2014.02.003.
Steve Stradling, Altrincham
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