Second year theatre studies students from Middlesex University have collaborated with Barnet’s safe and sustainable travel team to deliver road safety workshops to local sixth form students.
The workshops were delivered at The Compton School earlier this month – and saw the university students relay the exact words spoken by people from Barnet affected by road traffic collisions.
The workshop included a quiz with the aim of engaging the students in facts around road safety, using this as a discussion point to explore risky behaviours such as not wearing seatbelts and using mobile phones both as drivers and pedestrians.
The students were surprised by some of the trickier questions through which they learnt that new drivers caught using their mobile phone for the first time whilst driving could automatically lose their licence.
Pupils also learnt that overconfidence – rather than a lack of confidence assumed by many – is one of the contributing factors to young people involved in road traffic collisions.
The university students shared their thoughts having taken part in the project, one describing it as “eye opening, a wake up call” and another using their own recent near-miss incident as part of the performance.
Staff from The Compton remarked on how some of the pupils carried on discussing road safety after the workshop. A member of the school pastoral team said: “I think the students found it really valuable and even as a mechanism to start a conversation about road safety is really positive.”
Meanwhile, the students commented on what they had learnt during the session including how being involved in a road traffic collision “affects you mentally and how it affects others around you”.
Others expressed how they need to be more cautious when driving with friends and the realisation they are not invincible. One pupil commented: “The fact that it happened in Barnet, It happened here. It can happen to anyone.”
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