School project drives home road safety message

SHOCK tactics were used yesterday in a hard-hitting road safety programme for schools.

Pupils in the Transition Year class in St Aidan’s School in Dublin Hill, Cork, said the Drive4Life programme opened their eyes to the dangers on our roads and had changed their attitudes to driving. They said similar programmes should be part of every school’s curriculum.

They were shown photographs of car crashes and the results of a collision between two cars travelling at 60mph. They were also shown an emotional video of people who have been confined to wheelchairs after road accidents talking about their lives and clips of people talking about the deaths of their loved ones in car crashes.

Colm Ryan, 16, said the event had really “opened his eyes to the carnage on our roads. It’s definitely changed the way I think”, he said.

Stephanie Fogarty, 15, said the programme was “quite gruesome. We saw the results of two cars colliding at a combined speed of 120 miles per hour. I know now that if I’m in car and the driver’s going too fast, I’ll just ask him to slow down.”