The Older Drivers Forum, supported by Hampshire Constabulary, is taking part in Project Edwards – a week of action themed around ‘Fit for the Road’ between 13th-17th September 2021.
The Forum will be running a series of 6 free webinars during the week. Each webinar is on a different subject and designed to help and support the mature motorist to carry on driving safely for longer.
Project EDWARD stands for ‘Every Day Without A Road Death’ and is an annual UK-wide road safety campaign backed by government, the emergency services, highways agencies, road safety organisations and British businesses.
Shockingly, on average 5 people, a day are killed and around 150,000 people are injured each year on roads in Great Britain. Unfortunately, 20% of all deaths on our roads are older people. As older licence holders are increasing every year, fatalities for drivers aged 70 and over are forecasted to increase by 22% by 2040.
It’s known that older motorists have a wealth of experience, driving knowledge, confidence and tolerance. However, sight, hearing, reaction time and judgement of speed and distance may not be as sharp as it once was.
The Older Drivers Forum is about keeping mature motorists on the road safely for longer. Whether that’s helping giving practical and informative help and support to continue driving or pointing people in the right direction for an assessment to identify their driving needs – from wing mirror adapters to an elevated driving seat – the Forum’s here to help and signpost you to the people to help.
The Forum is a not-for-profit organisation made up of experts in road safety – from representatives from the emergency services to charities, local authorities, and businesses specialising in keeping older people on the road.
The chair and founder of the Older Drivers Forum Rob Heard said:
“We are excited and proud to support Project Edwards quest to make the roads safer for all. We can all become complacent about our driving and often pick up bad habits, which if not addressed can increase our risk of an incident on the roads.
“This week of webinars will help give advice on a number of subjects from Confidence building appraisals, Safe driving tips, Electric vehicles and driving with various medical conditions. We have a special webinar on Thursday afternoon hosted by Valerie Singleton OBE on Dash cams, which is one not to miss. We have 1000 free places, so make sure you book early to reserve your place.
“I am looking forward to welcoming you again to our webinars. We have had great feedback from previous ones we have run, one person who attended said ‘Extremely useful and informative. This is definitely one of the better webinars I’ve attended over the past few months, both in presentation and content.’”
The webinars are free and have expert speakers as well as participants being able to ask questions. People will need to register their place for each webinar and this can be done by visiting https://olderdriversforum.com/webinars/. The Forum have increased the number of places available this time to 1,000 free places, so should be able to accommodate anyone who wishes to register.
Bit confused. We are trying to help elderly people here, right? Many of whom wont be able to access the offering as they don’t even have “The internet” let alone computers and tablets, and we are offering them advice using these methods? How about some courses in the local community centre or town clubs. Or has the pandemic put paid to that?
very much needed.dangerous bunch over here .oblivious of other drivers.daily thing and needed addressing.near misses iv had with them is rather shocking
Don’t think it was a pensioner who overtook me yesterday while I was coming into Shalfleet. They, by the law of physics must have broken the speed limit to get past as I was doing cock on 30mph (as per the limit) They screeched to a halt at the traffic lights and let me have a good whiff of weed and a blast of Chief Keef from their open window.
You shouldn’t really generalise…. but….
I think that bad driving is not age related there are plenty of young and middle aged bad drivers as well, and if 20% of deaths are older drivers it follows that 80% must be younger drivers ,all so there is a high population of retired people on the island so it would effect the statistics.if you have so many near misses when your driving you might need to look at your own driving.
If you are frightened and dont like it here, go somewhere else.
So, 20%, of road deaths are older people, therefore 80% of of road deaths are younger people, so, who should be attending these webinars?
Its so easy to miss the obvious. Yes take all the young drivers off the road and reduce deaths by a large amount.
The car insurance companies know the score. Seriously though, all age groups need to up their game with driving skills. Remember patience is a life saver on the road. Can that be taught ???
The Gov will use old age as yet another means of getting more cars off the road, so their ilk can have less crowded roads to travel upon.
The demise of petrol and diesel and the costly and problems with charging for the poor, who have no drives of their own, and car ownership will plummet over the next decade.
As with all Tory plans, they look out for their own ilk, and we will travel on electric scooters in the rain, as they swish past in air conditioned, fully heated seated EV’s back to their 8 bedroom fully heated homes. And as they can afford it, will ‘portray’ to the world how green they are, with solar and heat pumps etc
i agree with you 100%, the Tory party seem to like nothing more than making life difficult for us ordinary working class people!