RYDA

Last Tuesday April 2nd, 248 Year 12 students from Glendowie Collage, 10 GDC teachers, 15 Facilitators and 8 St Johns Rotary Volunteers, assembled at Alexander Park Convention centre for 5 hours  of Road Safety Education under the umbrella of RYDA, "Rotary Youth Driver Awareness ".
 
RYDA workshops are conducted by Road Safety Education, (RSE), a not for profit organisation, for year 9 - 12 students and the workshop provides practical and powerful workshops to change the way young people think about road safety.  
 
RSE works with 650 Schools in Australia and New Zealand delivering the workshops to over 50,000 students annually.  St. Johns Rotary supports these workshops annually by paying for the students to attend and, as noted above, 248 GDC students attended.  Over many years, Nigel Robinson coordinated this programme on behalf of St Johns and it was very fitting last Tuesday morning when Gary Key paid tribute to Nigel for his effort over the years followed by a minute silence. 
This year Gary coordinated our involvement and assistance on the day, and he was ably supported by a team of 7, the 5  pictured with Gary, plus Isabella and Alex who were unfortunately missing in action when this photo was taken.  To see additional photos and some comments received from participants on the day, click "Read More", here. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Vehicle familiarisation seminar.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Between 50 and 90 students participated in each of the 6 sessions
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The inclusion of  real life accident victims and their stories was particularly poignant.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Breakout sessions wherever space was available were very productive - can you spot David James supervising his students??
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Final wrap-up - can you spot Gary & Murray?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Oh! there they are.
 
Some Comments received from the Glendowie College, students 
 
Drive SOS
Watching my friends find their blindspot.
Speed & Stopping
You got to see the effects in a real life situation And you could show where you thought the car would stop.
The I in Drive
The activity we did where we rated ourselves (knowing yourself, speaking up, self control, risk awareness and thinking social) made me realise my strengths and weaknesses. I believe these things will have a big affect when on the road in the future. Also, the speaker was very friendly and I felt the most included in the conversations.
Speed & Stopping
We got to physically see the effects of braking and speed on our cars and how we can learn to adjust our reaction times.
Crash Investigators
The story was very confronting and eye opening.
Genevieve's Story
It was a real eye opener to the real world which makes me think twice about how I want to drive in the future.
Drive SOS
The concepts seemed to have alot of implications in real world situations and were easy to apply to my own driving.
Crash Investigators
When Kelly told us her story I was so close to tears for her- both out of frustration and sadness that such a horrible occurrence happened, but we also got to look at why this happened and how we can prevent it from ever happening again in the future.