{"id":234725,"date":"2019-05-03T13:29:51","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T03:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=234725"},"modified":"2020-07-20T13:15:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T03:15:27","slug":"ryda-makes-our-roads-safer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2019\/05\/03\/ryda-makes-our-roads-safer\/","title":{"rendered":"RYDA Makes Our Roads Safer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Acting Sergeant Chris Watson, from the Gympie Road Policing Unit, and Senior Constable Jade Miller, from the Kingaroy Road Policing Unit, with a bunch of Kingaroy State High School students who watched the stopping distance display on Thursday … from left, Amber Fitz-Herbert, Savannah Jeffs, Denzel Strauss and Sarah Underwood with “Johnny” the dummy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

May 2, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Burnett roads should be a little bit safer following the latest round of Rotary’s successful RYDA program in Kingaroy this week.<\/p>\n

About 250 Year 11 students from Murgon, Kingaroy and Nanango State high schools and St Mary\u2019s Catholic College attended all-day road safety programs at the Kingaroy TAFE college.<\/p>\n

The school visits were spread across Wednesday and Thursday.<\/p>\n

The students, who are either already on their L-plates or about to be, came face-to-face with the realities and responsibilities of being a road user.<\/p>\n

Anecdotally, police say crashes in the South Burnett involving young drivers have decreased since the RYDA program began 10 years ago, but there are still too many.<\/p>\n

The students were divided into small groups and took turns attending a series of workshops.<\/p>\n

They learned about stopping distances with an on-road display by traffic police which included a dummy pedestrian being knocked flying on more than one occasion.<\/p>\n

As well as the speed and stopping display, they covered “Driver SOS”, “Genevieve’s Story”,\u00a0 the “I In Drive”, “Crash Investigators” and “Road Choices”.<\/p>\n

Genevieve’s Story relates the true tale of two 18-year-old girls who were killed in a head-on crash in the Yarra Valley in Victoria in 2009.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a powerful message aimed at getting the young drivers to think about the consequences of their actions, and the reason why crashes are never \u201caccidents\u201d.<\/p>\n

The “I in Drive” workshop encouraged the students to examine their own personalities and weaknesses, judging risk awareness, self-control and the ability to speak up.<\/p>\n

The RYDA workshops are organised by the Kingaroy, Taabinga and Murgon Rotary clubs in conjunction with local police, SES and other volunteers.<\/p>\n

The program is prepared by not-for-profit group, Road Safety Education, which also provided some speakers.<\/p>\n

Local RYDA co-ordinator Geoff Hosking said this was the 10th year the program had run in Kingaroy.<\/p>\n

He said all the presentations had been updated for the 2019 workshops.<\/p>\n

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