“Topical topics” at National Conference

The final session at National Conference 2013 comprised a series of presentations looking at topical road safety topics.

First up was a presentation by the Road Safety GB Yorkshire and Humber Region looking at cycling in the region and how they plan to use the Tour de France Grand Depart 2014 (from Yorkshire) to encourage more people to cycle in the region.

This was followed by a presentation delivered by DCC David Griffin (above left), ACPO lead for motorcycling, looking at whether the BikeSafe scheme is bridging the gap between test and post-test training. Evaluation of the scheme shows that 21% of the 4,000 annual participants go on to take further training, with others indicating that they intend to do so in the future.

Next on stage was psychologist Fiona Fylan (above right) who has evaluated the effectiveness of the National Speed Awareness Course. Fiona broke down speeding drivers into four categories according to their characteristics and reasons for speeding – ‘sleepy’, ‘dopey’, ‘grumpy’ and ‘happy’. She concluded that the course evaluation indicated an increased intention to comply with speed limits going forward immediately after attending the course. While this dropped off a little three months later, the number intending to comply with limits was still statistically significant. Fiona concluded that theory led behavioural interventions can affect people’s driving intentions.

Darren Divall from TRL (centre above) then gave a whistle stop tour of road safety education from other countries. He made the case for a formal road safety education curriculum with a minimum of 10 hours per annum, and said that across the EU teachers are the primary deliverers of road safety education.

Michael McDonnell (left) then delivered an excellent presentation looking at current campaign work by Road Safety Scotland. He argued that young driver interventions should start from a very early age as young children are heavily influenced by the way their parents drive. The current Road Safety Scotland campaign ‘Kids in the car‘ tackles this issue. He also briefly described the ‘Country Roads‘ campaign.

The final presentation was by the Kirklees Road Safety Champions, a group of young people who work with the local road safety team and other stakeholders to influence how young people behave on and around the roads. Their presentation was an uplifting way to end the 2103 conference.

The conference presentations will be posted to the conference website early next week.