The Road Awareness Training (RAT) programme is a community safety initiative. It is a partnership programme between Capita road safety and Cumbria Fire & Rescue Service, as part of the Better Ways to School project. This partnership also links in to the services principal objective "to work with others to achieve a safer community".

The programme may consist of up to two one-hour sessions at secondary schools for pupils aged 15 - 17 who are or about to use our roads.   This is not only for pupils driving cars but motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles and also travelling as passengers in vehicles.

Nationally it is recognised that young people are at high risk on the highway due to their inexperience they tend to feature highly in road crash statistics.   The purpose of the programme is to educate younger people of the dangers on the road and the consequences when something goes wrong.   Cumbria has the second highest accident rate for 17 to 21 year olds in England.   By addressing the dangers to youngsters before they get on the road, we hope to significantly reduce accidents in Cumbria and make the roads safer for everyone.

The package being delivered covers the following areas with a degree of flexibility due to local circumstances and experiences:

1.  Large graphic pictures of local RTA 

These pictures are either on boards or distributed around the class with the intention of getting directly involved with the group and getting them to talk and ask questions about the images they are viewing. It is at this stage fire crews mingle with the group and gain their respect. This is crucial and sets the tone for the remainder of the session as we don't want to be the only ones talking as we need the student's attention for the complete session.

2.  Watches Experiences 

The crews will briefly run through a number of experiences they have had during their service and talk about not just what they see but how it affects all the people involved at the incident (police, fire, ambulance, doctor, nurses, witnesses, casualty and passengers).

3.  Causes 

The class are asked to come up with a wide range of causes of accidents and crews will discuss each in turn and any which are missed are highlighted. Quite often missing are music, bravado and mobile phones, issues which are very current and need to be addressed.

4.  Video/Powerpoint presentation/DVD 

A video provided by Border TV and powerpoint presentation is shown and discussions are carried out on what has happened and the likely injuries sustained and how these occur.

A DVD is shown which shows the consequences of Road Traffic Collisions and shows very graphic images. This area of the lesson is very hard hitting and classes seem very shocked at what they see and hear.

5.  Consequences  

The group are asked about the videos and then given full details of who are affected as the result of a fatal RTA.

6.  Practical Demonstration   

The practical demonstration has been designed to show how a vehicle is damaged on impact and the difficulties encountered in extricating casualties.                                                                         

The Fire & Rescue Service have recently updated and centralised the control of this initiative and have updated the package to provide extra support for operational crews and provide additional resources for them to draw from.

This programme is available to all groups and not just specifically designed for teenagers, the programme is hard hitting and can be tailored for any audience.