TY Road Safety Talk

On the 10th of October, David Barren, a Garda Traffic Officer from the Road Safety Authority came in as a guest speaker for all the transition year students. To our surprise, it was no ordinary road safety talk. The presentation was compelling and engaging and we feel like everyone benefited from the experience.

His first sentence immediately engaged us and he held our concentration for the duration of the talk: “Three of you will die in an accident on the road.” He made it clear, from the beginning, the importance of road safety, particularly for people our age. He warned us that teenage girls, like ourselves, are three times more likely to die as a passenger in a vehicle. On the other hand, young male drivers (YMD) are eight times more likely to die as the driver in a vehicle. This is probably because they have still not matured, they are naive, over-confident and feel the need to impress.
We were astonished by the graphic video clips as it shows us how easy it is to lose concentration for just a second and how oblivious people are to the dangers of these situations. We also became alarmed when he showed us the impact of speeding cars and the likelihood of survival. For example, the likelihood of someone surviving the impact of a car driving at 60kph is 15%. Whereas if you reduce it to 50kph, the likelihood of survival rises to 55%. If you further reduce the speed to 30kph, the likelihood of survival is 95%. We were all amazed by how 10kph slower can be the difference between life and death.

We benefited from the talk by learning to be conscious of many things when getting into a car, such as who is the driver, have they consumed alcohol, have they got a valid licence and are they someone you can trust? However, if you are the driver; don’t do anything you will regret. Make sure you have not consumed alcohol and that you’re completely concentrated and not going to fall asleep. Also, most importantly, make sure that you are wearing your seatbelt; properly.

Overall, we feel that every student and member of staff that attended the talk, benefited greatly and are thankful that David Barren came in to speak to us about the aspects of road safety.