Wellington College air their views at Road Safety Week launch

May 22

Written By SADD

Kaitiaki o Ara/SADD has been a supporter of Road Safety Week for a few years now. Our objective has always been to demonstrate that the youth voice has a place at events such as this. It’s not the first time students associated with SADD have taken up the opportunity to address influential figures in the road safety sector. This year was no different with Fergus Prince and William Aliprantis stepping up to do just that!

Here, we share a little about how Fergus and William contributed on the day.

Road Safety Week is an annual event owned and run by Brake, a national road safety charity that works to prevent road deaths and injuries and support people bereaved and injured in crashes across New Zealand. The event has grown substantially and is supported by a host of other organisations including NZTA Waka Kotahi and BECA:

https://www.brake.org.nz/campaigns-events/events-training/road-safety-week

Caroline Perry is Brake’s Development Director, has worked for Brake for over 12 years and is responsible for the development of Brake in New Zealand including establishing their initiatives such as Road Safety Week. We had the absolute pleasure of attending this year’s official launch event at Waka Kotahi’s head office in Te Whanganui-a-tara. Firstly, we want to acknowledge Caroline Perry for all her hard work and effort. You really are a true road safety hero!

The event launch was a huge success and had some very influential speakers present including Hon. Simeon Brown (Minister of Transport), Nicole Rosie (Chief Executive, NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi), Darren Wu (Client Director, BECA) and Maria Lovelock (General Manager NZ, Road Safety Education and Secretariat of the Yellow Ribbon Road Safety Alliance).

SADD had been given the opportunity to have students speak at the launch so they passed that invitation to Wellington College students Fergus Prince and William Aliprantis and they were quick to take it up. We already knew each other because SADD has been instrumental in supporting their current project with SADD’s Lower North Island Programme Delivery Lead Bobbi Hutchinson facilitating their needs.

Wellington College has had a huge focus on Moped safety with teacher Patrick Smith taking the lead on this kaupapa. Many organisations have collectively contributed to make this space safer for students and the community. Fergus and William chose to talk about the process of change around this precise issue, including a recent motorcycle and moped safety workshop that took place at Wellington College on Thursday 27th March 2024. Below are a few points they shared with the audience:

Identifying the problem (at school):

Teachers were regularly receiving complaints about Wellington College students and the poor decisions they were making on their mopeds.
Both Fergus and William have witnessed 7 incidents involving mopeds on school grounds in the short four year span they have been at college.
The road outside their school (Mt Vic Tunnel), where the mopeds used to pull out, sees 45,000 cars per day that travel at around 50kmph.

How they planned to make a change:

They wanted to help educate students on how they can make more informed decisions on their mopeds.
The school introduced new interschool rules for the use of mopeds, as well as identifying a moped safety course for new riders.
The workshop was run with the help of ACC, Ride Forever, Wellington City Council, The New Zealand Police and The Motorcycle Collective.

How’s it going?

No Near Misses or Accidents have been recorded since the implementation of the new policies.
Drivers’ behaviour in school is astounding and has improved drastically after the new rule changes.

What next?

They are intending to help run the next Moped Safety Course this term.
Both are looking to get younger road safety advocates on board with them to continue the movement after we leave.
They are brainstorming new ideas that could be implemented to improve student moped driving and being safe on the roads outside school.
They have joined the Wellington AA District Council as youth representatives to identify the danger that state Highway 1 (specifically around the Basin Reserve) presents to vulnerable road users.

The school-based collaborative event was the first of its kind and will be developed and duplicated across the Wellington region. It is a fantastic example of road safety organisations working together to make our roads safer in Aotearoa.

After the event, Fergus and William were pretty popular and were sought out by supporting figures including Minister Brown who spoke with them at length. Both did their school and SADD proud. Their youth voice was most definitely heard! A little bonus was Kaitiaki o Ara/SADD Youth Representative Tayla Hill was the face on some of the week’s promotional material.

Fergus and William want to specially thank Joe Harwood from ACC, Peter Franklin from New Zealand Police, Jethro Day and his team at The Motorcycle Collective, Riley Cardo and Dee Clark from Wellington City Council and Patrick Smith from Wellington College for making this event possible. We look forward to seeing how this event develops in the future!