A pilot project in Northamptonshire gave 15-year-olds across the county the chance to ride a scooter for the first time in a safe environment.
The pilot project, First Go, saw pupils from schools in Wellingborough and Bugbrooke experience riding a scooter with expert tuition at Brackley Yamaha’s CBT centre.
The sessions, which were funded by Northamptonshire Casualty Reduction Partnership, included a mixture of practical and theory training. The practical training took place in a controlled off-road environment with a fully qualified DSA and CBT instructor. The theory session covered issues such as attitude, peer pressure and road safety knowledge.
Steve Barber, accident analysis officer at Northamptonshire County Council, said: “During 2008 and 2009 there were 55 collisions involving mopeds on the county’s roads. Of these, 34 involved 16-year-olds.
“Due to the lack of protection afforded by a moped, a disproportionate number of these collisions resulted in serious injury. Causation factors such as inexperience and panic figure largely in the crash details.
“The aim of the First Go pilot project is to improve the level of training given to potential young scooter riders so that they have some degree of experience before they can legally take a machine onto the road at 16.
“The pilot will be evaluated to see if the project can run again in the future.”
Click here to read the full Northamptonshire Police news release.
I think back to my early days in the 60s when I took part in the RAC/ACU training scheme. There were 13 x 2hr sessions [26hrs instruction] spread over several weeks and covering on road, off road, law and maintenance and much more.
Although there was a small nominal fee the training was done by experienced volunteers. Then the powers that be decided that the driving test needed to be tougher and in the main adopted that which the RAC/ACU had used for some time. But didn’t allow that organisation to train it, preferring it to go to private instructors and thus increasing costs.
Wouldn’t it be great if all riders got that degree of instruction at a notional or zero cost?
rcraven
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