YANCHEP District high school students have benefited from a visit by the Australian Trucking Association’s safety truck.
Health and physical education Year 8 coordinator Sophie Ward said the school’s 10 students were taking part in the keys for life program.
Mrs Ward said the information they gained from the safety truck presentation allowed them to further develop their knowledge and understanding in the subject.
“The truck highlighted to many of our students how dangerous our roads can be, making them think about the choices that they make when on the roads and what the consequences of those choices would be,’’ she said.
“It was a great presentation and had fantastic resources inside, something that we would like our Year 10 students every year to participate in.’’
The safety truck’s visit to Yanchep on Wednesday, September 14 was part of its inaugural tour through Western Australia.
Transafe WA executive officer Anastasia Stachewicz said safety truck driver and presenter Glen Schmidtke worked with students –particularly the Year 10 keys for life students – on his top tips for sharing the road with heavy vehicles.
She said students had the opportunity to climb into the truck cab to experience the size and height of the truck, and the range of sight of the driver.
WA Road Safety commissioner Kim Papalia welcomed the safety truck initiative due to the number of heavy vehicles on the state’s roads transporting general freight, ore, grain and livestock.
Of the 88 road fatalities in WA during the first six months of 2016, 12 of the fatalities involved a truck in the crash and while national BITRE figures for 2015 show 211 people were killed in crashes involving heavy vehicles, recent statistics released by the National Truck Accident Research Centre showed in collisions between cars and trucks involving fatalities, the truck was not at fault 84 per cent of the time.
Mr Papalia said the safety truck exhibit allowed general road users to gain an understanding of the length of heavy haulage vehicles and their braking capacity before they attempted to overtake them, as well as the visibility and maneuverability limitations of a truck.
