More than 1,600 teens attend a hard-hitting road safety event today at Breaffy house Resort in Castlebar.
The AXA road safety road show used graphic crash imagery to tell the story of how a night out ended in tragedy and permanent disability for one young driver.
The students also heard from a funeral undertaker, a family member of a deceased road traffic accident victim, a car crash survivor, and others, on the real-life, tragic, consequences of dangerous driving.
In order to ensure ‘street cred’ amongst the young audience it was considered appropriate to display hard-hitting images and to use strobe lighting during the presentations.
The traffic and road safety section of Mayo County Council believe that this is a very worthwhile event, which will hopefully leave a positive and lasting impression on the young people present. With fatal collisions at 18 to date, and 150 killed in 2018 this highlights the importance of the road safety message.
And most fatal and serious injury collisions happen during winter months - due to the dark nights and poorer road conditions, statistics show and one in five accidents are a result of occupants not wearing a seatbelt.
Noel Gibbons road safety officer with Mayo County Council added: "The effects are well documented - too many people are being killed on our roads or seriously injured for life.
“We hope that young people will learn from this event, think twice about the seriousness of safety when driving and realise the consequences of taking risks on the road.”
