Campaign Initiative to improve road safety
Monday, 03 February, 2014
The Honest Truth Campaign
Wiltshire students aged between 17 and 24 will soon take part in a driving campaign in a bid to reduce the number of young people killed or injured in car accidents.
Approved driving instructors across Wiltshire and Swindon will be delivering the campaign’s eight key messages to students learning to drive. The key messages
the campaign, called The Honest Truth, promotes are:- not to speed, not to
drive after drinking, not to drive while under the influence of drugs, to not use
mobile phones behind the wheel, for everyone in the car to wear seatbelts, to
not show off behind the wheel, to be properly insured and how to avoid getting
distracted while driving.
On average, a young person is killed on UK roads every 18 hours, while another
suffers a serious injury every 90 minutes. 17 to 24 year olds only make up about
10 percent of the population but in recent years they have accounted for:
■ Half of injury crashes between 10pm and 5am
■ Over a third of people arrested by Police after failing a roadside breath test following a crash
■ Half of crashes blamed on excess speed
■ Half of crashes involving only one vehicle
■ Nearly half of injury crashes in the rain.
The Honest Truth sees the Fire & Rescue Service, Wiltshire Police, Wiltshire
Council, Swindon Borough Council and approved driving instructors working together to help reduce these statistics.
Wiltshire Police head of Roads Policing Inspector, Steve Cox, said: “The Honest
Truth campaign is one of the most hard hitting campaigns I have seen in successfully delivering road safety messages to young adults. The impact of
The Honest Truth campaign not only teaches young people how to drive, but also
and most importantly educates young people on how to drive safely whilst travelling on Wiltshire and Swindon roads.
“The Honest Truth was introduced following a triple fatal road traffic collision
in rural South Devon in 2009 involving a single vehicle. Tragically, three young
people under the age of 19 all lost their lives. The investigation established that the road traffic collision was completely avoidable and that a lack of knowledge associated with being a young driver was a major contributory factor.”
