South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) is encouraging young people to sign up to a virtual driving experience after a number of fatalities on roads in the Horsham district.
The Horsham-based campaign group Drive IQ provides software for in-car lessons with six free e-learning modules to help with driving awareness, coping with distraction and improving observation.
Drive IQ campaign manager Emma Gardner, from Horsham, said: “It’s absolutely tragic that people are being killed and seriously injured on the roads across SECAmb’s region. Learning to drive should address young people’s attitude and behaviour behind the wheel of a car. Some one in five of new drivers have an accident on our roads within their first year of driving.’’
SECAmb’s driving standards manager Simon Macartney, a former road policing officer, said: “We’d really urge young people who are thinking about learning to drive but also all drivers to make use of this free software.
“Many of the A roads in the countryside across our region present unique risks to road-users and require extreme caution and consideration.
“Busy lifestyles, work and peer pressure make us drive faster. Fatigue, impairment, speed, vehicle maintenance and poor driving standards all contribute to the collisions we see and attend and human error can account for almost 99 per cent of all collisions.”
He added: “However experienced you are you should take extra care and ‘drive to arrive’.”
To find out more visit the Drive IQ website at http://www.driveiq.co.uk/ or follow on Twitter @drive_iq