Combining safe system principles and road safety education in schools: an opportunity for improved demand on road system operators and a broader understanding of risk and safety

Road safety education in schools offers many opportunities for improving road safety. The present paper draws on evidence of successful learning of road safety messages (as shown in school leaver quizzes) and safe system principles, to recommend features of road safety education which increase its chances of success. Safe system principles herald a new road safety paradigm in which the system operators hold the major responsibility for road safety, with an onus to accept that people will make mistakes, and thus that crashes will occur; and an onus to provide a system in which people are not exposed to physical forces beyond those which the human body can withstand, in a crash. Road safety education has not yet adopted this paradigm. Evidence based practice supports the following features of road safety education: it is part of the school curriculum, rather than irregular events; it includes content for every year of school; it does not include driver training; it is taught by professional school teachers with extra training in road safety so as not to perpetuate the social myths and risk misjudgements which pervade road safety; it includes teaching safe system principles as well as personal responsibility, in order to create understanding and demand for a safer system, the ultimate solution to the road safety problem.

• Record URL:
  http://acrs.org.au/publications/conference-papers/database/
• Authors:
  • Job, R F
  • Sakashita, C
• Conference:
  • Australasian Road Safety Research Policing Education Conference, 2012, Wellington, New Zealand
• Publication Date: 2012-10

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 6p
• Monograph Title: Reducing the cost of road safety: Australasian Road Safety Research, Policing and Education Conference 2012, 4-6 October 2012, Wellington, New Zealand

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Education; Highway safety; Highways; Risk management; Safety; Schools; Traffic safety; Traffic safety education
• Uncontrolled Terms: Risks; Safe systems (road users)
• Geographic Terms: Australia
• ATRI Terms: Crash countermeasure; Risk; Road safety; Road user education; School
• ITRD Terms: 1661: Accident prevention
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01480251
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: ARRB
• Files: ITRD, ATRI
• Created Date: Apr 30 2013 1:52PM