RYDA – Rotary Youth Driver Awareness 2016

REPORT ON RYDA – 6th April 2016

On Tuesday 6th April Lynda, Angie, Bob and I attended RYDA (Rotary Youth Driver Awareness) in Moruya at the Moruya Jockey Club to help supervise District high school learner or soon-to-be learner drivers. The students attending RYDA were from Narooma High School, Batemans Bay High School, Moruya High School and Carroll College.

The students were divided into groups. There were 6 different activities and the groups were rotated throughout these. Our group started with the Road Safety and Awareness talk given by the Safety Officer from Eurobodalla Shire Council. We were all made aware of the potential unseen hazards around us. A film showed driver attention to an oncoming car and where it was headed. A couple of potentially unseen hazards of a parked car and door opening on the driver’s side and a child riding a bike on the footpath were not noted by most and this was quickly realised by the students during the discussion afterwards.

Our next activity was observing the safety components possible in a car and noting the possible safety ratings for purchasing a car. Students then watched demonstrations of braking at various speeds. They were asked to estimate safety distances. They were shocked at how wrong their estimates were, with the final demonstration having great impact on the students. A small dummy was hit at 60 kmph when the speed should have been 50 kmph. The destruction of the dummy certainly impressed them with the differences in safety and speed.

We then attended a talk and discussion with police officers over the various rules to be followed by Learner, Red P-Plate and Green P-Plate drivers. The police enforced the notion that “If you don’t follow the rules, you lose your licence and could lose your car”. It was also emphasised that traffic accidents are not usually accidents but are crashes caused by neglect from a driver.

The next two activities dealt with victims of crashes. The first activity was listening to two gentlemen who had been involved in crashes in some way. The older gentleman had witnessed a mate being killed and had tried to help him. Then years later, he had had to ask one son to view the body of his own brother. The dead son had been on his way home with his brother from a holiday in another state. The second gentleman was an actual victim who had been involved in an horrific local crash. It had not been his fault and the other driver had managed to elude punishment. The victim’s compensation had been eaten away by medical bills but most impressive was that this man who was never supposed to walk again had found the courage to beat this conclusion and had eventually walked after 3 years of hard work. The students found his statement that he had given himself 3 years to walk and if he couldn’t he ‘would blow his head off” rather disturbing and hopefully it gave them food for thought.

The second activity in this category involved watching a film about the repercussions and ripple effect of a young person losing their life. Parents, friends and social mates discussed their feelings and how their child, friend and sibling’s death had impacted on their own lives.

During the last activity the students were asked to complete a personality test to see what personal attributes they needed to consider when they were driving a car. This included watching a film with the usual peer pressure ‘egging on’ in which many young people involve themselves. They then considered their own personality and the actions they would need to pursue to avoid involving themselves in crashes.

Overall it was an excellent course and it would seem most students took at least something away. My thoughts are that possibly the girls were far more willing to ask questions than the boys but this may have been only our group. If this is an overall conclusion from other groups there may be different methods which can be used to coerce the boys to ask more questions.

Sandra Doyle