RoSPA Young Drivers at Work Report

Chapter 8
The same themes of learning from direct experience, and
understanding consequences, were repeated in response to
our questions about effective general safety messages for
young people. Again, the consensus was that unless and
until an accident happens to you, you will not learn and
you cannot be told. As with further driver training, there
also needs to be clear, direct and obvious benefits for
young people to encourage them to begin to associate the
safety messages with their own lives:
“Unless it affects me directly then I tend not to pay
much attention. I know that sounds terrible, unless
it says:‘it’s going to affect your job doing it this
way so you’d best do it that way’, then no I’m not
going to listen. ”
(Focus group 5 member)
“If something happened to me because I didn’t pay
attention to that initiative then that would make
me listen, if I got injured because I didn’t read it
properly or because I didn’t pay any attention to it.
Unless it affects me directly then I don’t listen. ”
(Focus group 5 member)
38 Young Drivers at Work Report