Drive for Life Event

The Drive for Life Event is an interactive presentation delivered by representatives from the four South Yorkshire authorities and personnel from the police and fire and rescue service. Its aim is to:

• Highlight the main causes of collisions involving young drivers.
• Influence young peoples’ attitude to risk taking and law breaking with regard to driving.
• Reduce the number of young driver collisions, particularly those involving KSI casualties.
• Improve partnership working between agencies, some of who have never before worked together.

The event was initially targeted at learner drivers through driving instructors but is now concentrated on 16-18 year old students in schools and colleges. It covers a wide range of issues which should help young drivers become better, more focused and considerate drivers, including:

• Driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs
• Use of seatbelts
• Distractions

The Event consists of a two hour interactive package which initially included:
• An initial hard hitting presentation including strong film footage.
• Interactive scenarios covering drink/drug driving, speed, peer pressure, seat belt usage.
• “At the scene of an accident” presentation or a fire and rescue extrication demonstration.
• A talk by someone who had caused a death on the road or who was personally involved with a victim.

The project has brought together and strengthened partnerships with organisations who had not previously worked together. This has led to several other shared initiatives being developed.

The University of Sheffield developed questionnaires based on the well validated Attitudes to Driving Violations questionnaire to determine if the project had resulted in a positive change in attitude amongst the attendees. Evaluation early in the project indicated a small improvement in attitude. A full evaluation report was provided by the University in December 2010 covering the first two years of the project.

100 ‘Events’ were held over the initial two year period with 4,308 people in total attending. In 2010/11 2900 people attended while the figure so far in 2011/12 is 1600.

Brainbox produced an evaluation report for the project covering 2010/11. The project has been well received in schools and colleges with requests for repeat Events being received.