Running a vehicle safety expo with Darfield High
The awesome SADD/Kaitiaki o Ara group at Darfield High School ran a vehicle safety expo this term, and we thought that other young people would benefit from hearing about how they went about it!
Lydia had a chat with Piper and Vaughan about how they felt the event went, and some of the key behind the scenes info that helped it to be a success it was!
Kia ora Piper and Vaughan! What made your SADD group want to run a vehicle safety expo?
“We wanted to run an event that would show the students what SADD was and an event that was interactive and would cater to the different ways DHS Students learn. So we decided to get people in from the community to have conversations with the students, and created stations which allowed them to be hands on which most student love as it is different and gets them away from sitting in a classroom all day.” - Piper Benbow
“We recognised that within our school a lot of our students enjoy learning through hands-on activities and situations where information is presented in a physical form. Bringing real cars, real tyres and an actual mechanic into the school for the event made the content and learning more real for students. This made the event more engaging and fun for our students” - Vaughan Smart
I really like how you thought through what your audience (your fellow students) needed to learn/engage! Tell us about the event, what were the different stations, what community partners did you involve, which students came along etc?
“All our yr 12 and 13 DHS students attended the event during ‘Whānau time’ which is a class we have at Darfield 1 hour a week specifically for learning life skills that we wouldn’t normally learn about in the classroom, such as vehicle safety. We had seven stations:
Basic Vehicle Maintenance with our local Mechanic. This station covered topics such as lights, indicators and why you should change your oil.
Tyres. For this station we got half a dozen faulty tires, with one good one thrown in for good measure, and asked students to try and identify faults with the tires, measure the tread depth, work out which tire was safe to use etc.
Stopping distances. We set up a line of cones on the field and got students to guess how far it would take for the vehicle to stop at varying speeds and different road conditions.
Safety and Fuel Efficiency ratings. For this station we got 4 different vehicles including a Nissan Leaf, SADD Suzuki Vitara, Fiat 500 and Isuzu MU 4wd and got students to stand around the vehicles, guessing which would be the most fuel efficient then safest before we revealed the answers.
What would you miss? (SADD Activity)
Road Safety Conversations on License Conditions, etc. Originally we had hoped to have the Selwyn District Council Road Safety Coordinator and NZ Police to run this station, but due to us having to change dates they weren’t able to make it, however luckily our group member Levi stepped up and did an awesome job of running this without them.
What is SADD - General Road Safety Quiz. This was just a general quiz about the road code and SADD’s six principles.
Amazing! That is such a good range of stations, with a good balance of fun and learning. I am also very impressed with how you went about organising all this all as I can imagine there are a lot of specifics to make sure you have sorted. So, how did you go about organising this event? Tell us how your group handled the logistics?
“We had a very detailed document for planning. The document covered almost every detail of what was going to happen at each station and also what we needed to organise for each station, for instance tyres for the tyre checking station or statistics for the stopping distances station. The document covered everything. It allowed us to organise the different things needing to be done, and allowed us to assign different tasks to people. The document was very useful when trying to organise such a large event including so many people.” - Piper Benbow
I love a good google doc, and really cool that you could get your whole SADD group involved too. I know that your group also had to be flexible and there were a few obstacles that you faced to get the event off the ground, tell us about these and how you overcame them?
“Yeah things didn't quite get off to the smooth start we had hoped for. We had planned to run our event during Road Safety Week but due to bad weather and our event being outside we had to postpone the event till the following week. This meant sadly NZ Police and the council Road Safety Coordinator were unable to make it, but one of our group members Levi stepped in and did his own research so that we could still run all seven stations. Then much to our horror when the day finally came around the fire alarm went off and 2 students required medical assistance in the middle of our event all within the first 5 - 10mins. Persistence paid off though and after 20 - 30mins of standing on an astroturf waiting for the fire service to clear the school buildings we were able to resume the event. We got permission to run into our morning tea interval and were able to get most of the students through all of the stations.” - Vaughan Smart
“We didn’t have the best luck when it came to weather or the timing of a fire and medical events, but we managed to get a bit more done when we returned from the fire alarm. It was a situation that we couldn’t do much about. Sometimes things just happen and we just roll with it. We postponed the event by a week due to rain as we would have lost too many stations if we had tried to run it inside. The fire alarm took about half the time that we had to run our event so was a bit of a bugger but we still got decent engagement and managed to give some people some prizes which hopefully helped catch their attention.” - Piper Benbow
I am so impressed with how you faced the sudden changes and managed to keep it together and adapt, those circumstances would have thrown a lot of people so well done for rolling with it, and still pulling of a stellar event! Any tips for another group wanting to run something similar?
“If things go wrong try not to panic, it's possible to salvage events and make something out of challenging situations! It felt like we went through every possible option when we were talking to the Principal, waiting for the fire brigade to give the all clear. From postponing to the following week, trying again next period, to going straight back into it and getting as much done as possible we discussed it all. We made the call to continue and while the event was slightly compromised it was the right decision and worthwhile!” - Vaughan Smart
“Have a plan for most possibilities and remember not everything is going to run to plan, there are always going to be things that fall through but just roll with it enjoy getting to educate and engage your peers. Just look at the positives because any event run is a success in itself - Piper Benbow
What a great outlook you have! How do you hope that this event impacted your peers?
“We hope this event made students at our school think about the vehicles they were driving and the state of repair they were in. Hopefully we also started some conversations between students and their parents around vehicle maintenance and safety. We gave out plenty of resources and free stuff such as tyre tread depth checkers so that students could go home and carry out basic safety checks on their own vehicles.” - Vaughan Smart
“I hope that just the little bit of conversation we were able to have with them sparked a reminder that we need to keep safe. I ran the station on stopping distances and even though it was mainly me talking to them with the visual aid of cones on the field they took notice as sometimes it just takes a visual to be able to actually understand the true extent of how far it actually is. Hopefully our peers enjoyed and learnt a lot that they may remember and may stay safer on the roads” - Piper Benbow
We are so impressed with this vehicle safety expo - it showed such great organisational skills, as well an awesome understanding of what would not only be really beneficial for your peers, while also being enjoyable and engaging. Also a massive props to you for being resilient when things didn’t go as planned. We know that this event would have made a real positive impact for the DHS students, so thanks for making a difference in your community!