A major new road safety initiative for school children was launched by national road safety organisation, Road Safety GB (RSGB), at the CLOCS seminar held at Tip-ex 2015. Presented by RSGB Chair, Honor Byford, and entitled; Stay Safe On The Road, the initiative has been developed by RSGB in conjunction with Scania (Great Britain) Limited and seeks to teach 10-11 year olds about commercial vehicle blind spots and rear-wheel 'cut in' when turning corners.
Addressing the seminar, which was attended by approximately 100 delegates, Honor Byford said: "The objective of this initiative is to show children how to stay safe when cycling or walking near to commercial vehicles. Our intention is that the programme should now be delivered to children the length and breadth of the UK, and our hope is that the industry will come together and provide assistance to help us succeed in that aim."
For Scania, Business Development and Marketing Director Arif Jafferji says: "Safety is always Scania's top priority and we are delighted to be supporting this initiative. An immense amount of time and effort has been put in to produce a programme which will spread awareness among children in a manner which is both instructive and memorable. On behalf of all of us at Scania, I would like to thank the Road Safety GB team for their invaluable input which has led to the creation of this unique road safety programme."
Stay Safe On The Road is part theoretical and part practical and is delivered in accordance with a full lesson plan developed especially for the programme. During the lesson, worksheets compare students' knowledge of blind spots and cut-in before and after teaching in order to ascertain the learning gained during the session. Following the lesson, each student is given a personal copy of a Stay Safe on the Road booklet and a poster is left with the school to display as an aide memoire. The final part of the process are three follow up sessions at intervals of six weeks and three and six months. These are delivered by the school and are designed to measure student's retention of the programme's messages over the longer term.