Safe vehicles that prevent crashes and save lives - Lesson plan for secondary schools

Explain to pupils that, while it's not nice to hear, every year, more than 1,700 people die on UK roads. Another 30,000 receive serious, life-changing injuries. These crashes have a devastating effect on families and their communities.

Talk to pupils about how vehicle safety has evolved over time and how these days the safest vehicles are designed to prevent road crashes and protect people inside and outside the vehicle if a crash does happen.

Use the factsheet for educators to support your discussion and help pupils understand some of the ways safe vehicles can help prevent crashes and keep people safe, if a crash does happen.

As road users, we have a responsibility to ensure our vehicles are well-maintained and roadworthy, both for our safety, and the safety of others. Discuss this with pupils, using some of the questions below to support your discussion.

• How do you, as a road user, take responsibility for your safety?
  Answers could include wearing seat belts when in a vehicle, checking our bikes or cars are roadworthy, obeying road rules, keeping to speed limits, crossing roads safely, using segregated footpaths or cycle paths.
• How are vehicles designed for safety?
  Pupils may mention seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, reversing cameras, or modern vehicle safety technology such as emergency braking, lane keeping assistance, etc.
• How do you think switching off modern safety features poses risk to drivers, their passengers and other road users?
  Encourage students to consider what they would do, if they were driving a vehicle with safety features.
• What changes would you like to see, to help make vehicles safer in the future?
  Encourage students to think about how modern vehicle technology and self-driving vehicles can help make our journeys safer by reducing or even eliminating crashes where human error is a factor.

Until recently, when people tried to make cars safer, they mainly focused on ways to protect people inside the car if there was a crash – this means things like seat belts and airbags which we’re used to seeing in cars. Seat belts and airbags are both amazing inventions that can stop people from going through the windscreen or hitting the inside of the car if there’s a crash.

Now, most modern vehicles have technology that works to prevent crashes from happening in the first place – and to reduce the risk of death or serious injury for people inside or outside the vehicle.

Ask pupils to spend some time individually or in small groups, researching one of the following questions about developing vehicle safety technology. Ask them to feedback to the class to share what they've found out.

• The first modern car was invented in 1886. What key inventions have improved safety since then
  Pupils' answers may include grooved tyres to improve grip (1908); indicators invented to turn more safely (1916); airbags patented (1951); three-point seat belts invented (1959); the first rear-view cameras, giving drivers better views around their vehicles (1991).
• How has the law changed in the UK to reflect the development of safer vehicles?
  For example: it has been a legal requirement for all drivers and front seat passengers to wear a seat belt since 1983. Since 1991, it has been a legal requirement for all passengers to wear a seat belt. In 2006, the new Road Safety Act introduced new offences for failing to maintain a vehicle correctly.
  
• How could self-driving vehicles make our journeys safer by reducing or even eliminating crashes where human error is a contributory factor?
  The technologies used by self-driving vehicles have the potential to reduce or even eliminate crashes where human error is a contributory factor. Self-driving vehicles do not get tired, distracted or intoxicated, and are programmed to operate safely
• What is the 'Safe System' approach to road safety and why are safe vehicles important?
  The Safe System is an approach to road safety where different elements of the road system - vehicles, infrastructure, speed limits, road users, and post-crash care - work together as one to minimise the chance of a crash, or, if a crash does take place, to prevent death or serious injury from occurring.