Road Safety

The Faster the Speed the Bigger the Mess

Rationale

As student near the later stages of adolescence, most will either get their liscence or be friends with someone who does. The inexperience of these drivers, mixed with their inpulsiveness and tendency to be engaged in risk taking behaviour, makes these drivers a risk to themselves and to those around them . Teaching students about road safety and the consequences of risk taking behaviour will hopefully help reduce the number of fatalities involving P plate drivers.

Stimulus Material

Youtube Video "The faster the Speed, the Bigger the Mess"


(The Faster the Speed, the Bigger the Mess, 2008)

Syllabus Outcomes

5.6 A student analyses attitudes, behaviours and consequences related to health issues affecting young people.

SLA

Road Safety
- Major casual factors in road and traffic related injuries, eg human (speeding, drug use, fatigue, occupant restraint), environmental, vehicular.
- Consequences of unsafe road use behaviour

Skills

Decision Making
Planning

Description

- Students watch the youtube clips
- Students are then to create two ripple charts (a small circle in the middle with larger circles increasing around it)
- In the centre of the first chart, they would place a hypothetical victim of a fatal car crash that involved speeding.
- In the circle around that, students than think about and write down who this would immediately effect and how. Eg mother and father losing their child and what this could potentially do to them.
- In the next circle, students think about and write down who this would affect next and how. Eg close friends and other family members and what this could potentially do to them.
- Students continue this adding as many circles as they can, branching into school, community, government etc.
- When this is done, they would then place themselves in the centre of the next circle, but this time they are the speeding driver who killed their friend.
- The outer circles would all be ways in which the crash would have directly and indirectly affected their lives. Eg, from the physical injuries suffered in the crash to the mental health issues that could be encountered in five years time.

Follow Up Activity
- Keeping in mind the video, students are to divide their page into three columns.
- The first should have the heading "Human", the second "Environmental" and the third "Vehicular"
- Students need to write down as many causes of motor vehical accidents they can think of that fall under those headings.