road safety

Drivers need first aid skills

It’s Road Safety Week (21-27 November) and this year’s theme is ‘Too young to die’ – a poignant choice, given that road accidents remain the biggest killer of young people in the UK.

This country has an unenviable record for road safety. In fact, we see around 2,000 thousand deaths per year, each one a personal tragedy causing heartache and an irrevocable sense of loss. And that’s why the Red Cross believes it’s so important to equip drivers with basic first aid skills.

Why is first aid so important? Take just one example: a road casualty can die due to a blocked airway in less than four minutes – while it takes around eight minutes for emergency services to reach even the most urgent cases. But the remedy is simplicity itself. In such a case, just knowing how to roll an unconscious casualty onto their side and lift their chin can be all it takes to save a life.

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Shock tactics

Katrina has sent me a link to a great road safety video made in south Wales. Its been featured in the Guardian and also on various TV channels throughout the US. The film focuses on the dangers of texting whilst driving, I should warn people its very graphic and not for the faint hearted. There’s also a great article detailing some of the thoughts behind making the film.

Watch the video on Youtube (Graphic content)

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Tales from the road (day five)

Our travels today took us to Broadwater Farm estate, London.day5pic2

We were teaching local young offenders in our sessions. The groups were small, but this allowed us to really engage with the young people and get them involved! As well as first aid, we played several ‘ice breaker’ games such as pictionary to get them involved. “There were less people but this gave us more quality time with the individual young people” Nathan Hollingsworth (Peer educator, 20) More

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Day four of our road show lives

Day four of our road show lives,
Today we have been in Hampshire working with young people from Hermitage housing.

We arrived this morning at Lee on Solent community centre to meet a young enthusiastic group. Their session started off with them having the chance to experience how drugs and drink effect your eye sight and other bodily functions. Dont worry, It was goggles that they were using which simulate how drink and drugs effect you. We linked this with drink driving and it gave them a visual way to understand why people shouldn’t drive under the influence of drugs and alchohol.DSCF0998 - 2

The group interacted really well and our Help a Mate team were pleased about the feedback that we got from the group. In their evaluations at the end of the session comments were left on post-it notes saying ‘I have got more confidence in first aid now’ ‘I would help anyone in the street’

Another comment was also made that said ‘I love the red cross’. When we get feedback from other young people like this it really makes us proud of the work we are doing and what a diffence we are making to vunerable people’s lives.

After this session we took the oportunity to do some outreach work and went to the local skate park where we gave out freebie plasters and spoke to four young daring skaters about how to control a bleed and they shared their experiences with us and then we gave them advice.
The road show is now nearing the end but our work is not over yet so keep your eye on this space

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Tales from the road (day two)

Three tubs of ice cream, 85 miles and one eventful day later…!

Day two of the roadshow took us to a community centre in Harlow, Essex. The centre accommodates homeless young people and helps them find employment and training. We ran two sessions (morning and afternoon) training some of the young people living in the centre. The young people really engaged with the sessions, one person even stayed for the whole day and helped us with the group! More

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Tales from the road (day one)

Peer educator teaches young people how to treat a burn

Hello from Harlow (thats Essex by the way!)

Today was the first day of our Help a Mate roadshow around the southeast. Chris talked about this briefly in a previous post  but to sum up: we’re a team of peer educators travelling around the southeast teaching young people how to deal with road traffic incidents. The sessions we run have been designed by young people and helps them build confidence as we stage a mock car crash.

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I have a question

What did you do today?

Felt the Monday blues? Enjoyed the sunshine? Had a day off?

A normal day.

Not for everyone. Every day, on average seven people die on our roads. Each year, 28,500 people are seriously injured and many of these casualties are children. roadsafetycrash

The British Red Cross is currently running a campaign called “Help a Mate”. The idea is for peer educators to teach young people in deprived areas how to deal with road traffic collisions. Next week, a team of peer educators (including me!) will be touring the south east visiting various youth and community groups.
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