A HARD-HITTING presentation aimed at promoting car and driving safety was delivered to students at St Ninian’s High School, Douglas last week.
The Drive Safe Live Long programme is delivered annually across the island’s schools to year 11 students (ages 15-16), when they are beginning to learn to drive.
Representatives from the Isle of Man Fire and Rescue Service, the constabulary, and Ambulance and Paramedic Service joined forces to deliver the presentation – along with Sandra Dimelow. She was asked to share her experience of the devastating impact a fatal car accident can have, after her daughter Aalish Patterson, aged 17, died in a crash in May 2005.
She said: ‘Sixteen-year-olds think they are totally invincible and that nothing will happen to them.
‘It’s essential we get the message across that it could happen.’
The programme was launched seven years ago to reduce the high number of road deaths among young drivers in the Isle of Man.’
Mrs Dimelow said: ‘It’s quite harsh, but at the end of the day they are young adults. If they are old enough to be out in a car, then they are old enough to know what might happen.’
Students were shown graphic pictures of injuries sustained by young motorists in crashes.
They watched a short film involving a young woman whose car was hit by a drunk driver.
And they took part in awareness tests which show how drivers can fail to spot other road users, particularly cyclists and motorcyclists.
Representatives from the emergency services also talked to the students about how hard it is for them to carry out their work at a crash scene, and delivering the news to families of fatal crash victims that they haven’t survived.
At the end of the presentation, they were taken outside to see the car that had been involved in a fatal crash.
Mrs Dimelow said: ‘It looks like it has been dropped out of an airplane.’
Inspector Derek Flint said since the programme’s launch there had been fewer fatal crashes involving young drivers on the island’s roads.
‘I’ve been doing this for six years now. At that time we were annually going to one collision a year, if not two or three, involving young drivers in their cars with friends where they were losing lives. We are not going to the same number now.’
Zurich has sponsored wristbands – designed to look like black tyres – to be given to each student that sees the presentation. It is hoped it will remind them what they learned.
