RYDA Presentation

Anton Hockey, the Program Coordinator for Victoria and South Australia, gave a very interesting presentation at our recent meeting on RYDA, the Rotary Youth Driver Awareness program.

This program has a mission of making our roads a safer place by empowering and motivating young people through world class education, with a vision of saving lives.

RYDA was launched in 2001, originally as a Rotary project, and has grown in its scope over the succeeding years. The content is reviewed yearly by an academic board, including child psychologists, who advise on how to make the content and delivery most appropriate for developing young minds.

The program grew out of the knowledge that while young people are 10% of the population, they make up 20% of the fatalities in car accidents. In regional areas, youth make up 77% of the fatalities. In fact, fatalities are just the tip of the iceberg as, for every fatality, there are 30 times the number of injuries, many with life long implications. The graphical information is startling, to see how much at risk P-platers are just after they gain their licence.

The RYDA program is based around evidence of what works with engaging young people, specifically:

– Small groups

– Explicit, age appropriate, contextually relevant and appropriately challenging activities

– Material that targets risk behaviour

– Interactive activities

– Supporting the curriculum in schools to reinforce and revise the material

The workshops are run as six 30 minute sessions:

– Road choices – identifying key risk factors such as fatigue and distraction

– Crash Investigators – a crash survivor identifies crash factors

– Speed and Stopping – a practical demonstration establishes the relationship between speed and stopping distance

– Mind Matter – explores how mind state is a significant road safety risk factor

– Driver SOS – “drive so others survive”

– The “I” in Drive – how personality impacts risk on the road, with a self-reflection activity and role plays to model how to speak up

In 2024 RYDA ran 500 workshops in Australia and NZ, delivering the program to 62,000 young people in 711 schools.

RYDA has had great endorsement from participants and their teachers. Of 1800 teachers surveyed 97% said that the RYDA course should be compulsory for all students. Recent negotiations have also led to the support for RYDA from Victoria Police.

The cost per student for the day is around $70 but as RYDA receives funding from organisations such as Beaurepaires, they are able to offer it for as little as $29 per student.

While in Victoria RYDA is now a program run independently of Rotary, many Rotary clubs are involved in various ways such as:

– Communication and liaison with school leadership to encourage schools to participate

– Volunteering for a RYDA workshop, to support the presenters by being timekeepers

– Providing links to other sources of community support

– Financial support for a school to enable them to send students, possibly by funding students at $15 per head, or providing the buses to take the students to the venue

Several members of our Club have assisted at a RYDA workshop and it may well be possible to have more involvement in the future.

Our thanks to Anton for his very informative presentation.

RYDA Presentation

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