Year 12 ‘Safe Drive Stay Alive’

On Wednesday this week, Year 12 students, accompanied by their tutors, Mr Cropper and Mrs Wilson attended the Middleton Arena for this year’s ‘Safe Drive Stay Alive’ event. This is an initiative organised by the Greater Manchester emergency services working together to deliver some powerful messages about the dangers faced by young drivers and their responsibilities both behind the wheel and as passengers. Three of our students have written an article about the event and the important information they took away from it.

Driving, and the freedom it brings, is something many people look forward to being able to do. Receiving driving lessons as birthday gifts and saving up to buy our first car is something most teenagers look forward to – however, whilst this is an exciting opportunity, there are dangers that can arise from it. The ‘Safe Drive Stay Alive’ team informed us of precautions we can take to ensure we have the safest experience when driving or being driven.

We were able to listen to stories from many different people’s point of view, we heard from: paramedics, fire fighters, police, family who had experienced the loss of a loved one through an accident, and a survivor themselves. The touching stories were a real eye-opener into the dangers that driving can bring. However, these dangers can be prevented – for example, by wearing a seatbelt. We were taught the importance of not being driven by someone who is intoxicated (by drugs and/or alcohol). We were also taught not to drive whilst intoxicated ourselves as this can lead to tragedy. Your whole life or your family’s life can be changed catastrophically in a matter of seconds: checking a text, changing a song, or challenging other drivers can be a matter of life or death.

People recounted their devastating experiences in which their loved ones lost their lives due to recklessness when driving or being the passenger of a careless driver. The consequences can be abysmal, we learned this first hand from the father of an 18-year-old girl named Vicky whose life was taken selfishly by a negligent driver. This exemplified the fact that you bear the responsibility of multiple lives when driving, you are the controller of their fate.

We can safely say that this experience was a wake-up call to the consequences of poor decisions whilst driving, we will definitely pay more attention to the highway code (as instructed by the ‘Safe Drive Stay Alive’ team). We thank Mr Cropper, Mrs Wilson and the ‘Safe Drive Stay Alive’ team for this opportunity and for raising our awareness of the repercussions of unsafe driving.

Written by Hiba Ahmed, Mia Dyson and Zoe Tomlinson