Prevention policies/activities in schools
The NZ Transport Agency's road safety education guidelines summarise what the research and road safety experts consider to be good practice in road safety education.
Whenever Police or other resource people provide road safety education, the following guidelines should be followed:
- All schools should have a comprehensive road safety policy. A sample is provided in the New Zealand Transport Agency’s Education Portal.
- Students should only be given information that is within their experience or legal age (e.g. no driver education for young people under 16) or as advised by Police (e.g. no under 10 cycling unaccompanied on the road).
- Lessons will emphasise strength-based processes (e.g. show correct rather than incorrect skills, stress the positive values of following traffic laws and school rules rather than the punitive aspects).
- Schools should teach regular and planned classroom-based road safety education programmes such as Road Safe.
- The New Zealand Transport Agency has developed a set of road safety education guidelines.These guidelines provide useful questions to help schools ensure the efficacy of road safety education initiatives/interventions and programmes being offered to their school and community.
- The document One Day Guidance provides advice to improve some types of prevention activities that, although provided with good intentions, may actually be less effective, e.g. one-off events, scare tactics, and activities that only raise awareness rather than address risk factors.
Response policies/activities in schools
To ensure consistency of response, each school should have clear procedures to follow when students or staff break traffic laws or school rules around road safety.
Schools and local Police are encouraged to develop and agree protocols about when and how Police will respond to behaviour by students, staff, or members of the public that places students at risk of road trauma. This could be done as part of the overall school-Police partnership process.