Students from a school in Bath and North East Somerset have praised a free driving awareness session being delivered on behalf of Avon and Somerset Police.
80 pupils from Chew Valley School in Chew Magna have taken part in the Road Smart driving awareness course in a bid to help reduce their risks on the road.
Road Smart, produced by the TTC Group on behalf of Avon and Somerset Police, is designed to raise awareness of potential hazards for drivers. More than 1,000 people of all ages have signed up for the free course.
Sergeant Will Stephens, Avon and Somerset Police, said: “These free sessions are available all over the force area for members of the public of all ages. We can also arrange for courses to be held at schools, colleges or places of work to reach larger groups.”
The series of events held at Chew Valley School over the past three months is part of a collaboration between Bath and North East Somerset Council and Avon and Somerset Police to promote road safety for young drivers.
The Road Smart initiative complements the council’s ‘Wrecked West’ risk avoidance classes to provide young drivers and passengers with knowledge to help them safely negotiate their formative driving years.
Andy Arbuckle, head of sixth form at Chew Valley School, said: “This is the fourth workshop we’ve run this year and students have found them very helpful.
“Another excellent scheme is the Wrecked West road safety presentations and we are working closely with the Bath and North East Somerset road safety team to make sure that our students benefit from this as well.”
One sixth-former, Lydia Lanning, said the course was “really eye-opening” and “made you realise just how important the speed limits are”.
Another, Ben Grant, said the course “made me think about my driving much more” and added that he was “going to be much more aware of other drivers and pedestrians”.
The usual figure that’s bandied about by people that have no understanding of human factors and human error is 70%. I suppose that by making the figure much bigger up to the whopping 95% in this case, they are attempting to drive home the idea that all we have to do is to eradicate error and everything will be OK.
Indeed eradicating error is a fine idea, but first you have to know what a human error actually is. Is it a slip, a lapse or a mistake? Is it part of the system or independent from it? Is it specific to one person or is it suffered by all? Is it a problem or is it a solution? By eradicating one error form does another appear in its place? Lots of questions indeed, but I doubt that any of the children from Chew Valley School will have even the slightest clue how to answer them.
Duncan MacKillop, Stratford on Avon
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The poster states that “95% of all collisions are caused by human error” (what causes the other 5%??). So you would expect the course to focus on hazard perception, observation, concentration, anticipation, planning, etc. Odd, therefore, that one delegate is quoted as saying it “made you realise just how important speed limits are”.
Eric Bridgstock, Independent Road Safety Research, St Albans
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