Buckinghamshire’s online workshop provides winter driving refresher
A new online workshop has been launched in Buckinghamshire to help all drivers prepare for driving in winter conditions.
The free course covers the challenges to road conditions, driver, and car that winter weather can cause, and was developed by road safety officers at Transport for Buckinghamshire (TfB), a strategic partnership between Buckinghamshire County Council and Ringway Jacobs.
Buckinghamshire County Council’s deputy leader, Mark Shaw, explained that the online course was designed to replace the local sessions TfB has held in previous winters, and has already been completed online almost 500 times since it launched in late December 2018; “For the last few years we’ve run winter driving sessions at fire stations across the county. However, for all the enthusiasm and interest we see in the subject, and the people who book places, they were very under-attended and last year we even had to cancel one due to low take-up on the places. Over the last three years we’ve only had just over 100 people across the whole county turn out for them. We reached the realisation that while everyone might think it’s a good idea to take a refresher course on winter driving, the idea of actually heading out to the fire station on a cold and dark winter night wasn’t very appealing!
The new online workshop is very thorough and contains loads of useful advice for drivers of all vehicles, and we’ve already seen double the number of people take it up online as we saw attend the driving sessions over the last three years. It only takes about ten minutes and is totally free to use – we’ve been lucky with the milder winter weather this year but we are still seeing some icy nights and frosty mornings, so we want everyone to take the time to do this workshop and arrive safely, wherever they’re going.”
The workshop was developed by New View Consultants and TfB’s award winning network safety ETP (Education Training and Publicity) team. It uses plain English and effective visual communication to help drivers remember the important things they may need to do when driving on the roads in severe weather.
By mixing up powerful photographic images and engaging graphics, as well as a voiceover element, the workshop is designed to fully engage the user and ensure they come away with memorable new tips and facts to help them drive more safely. It can be accessed by searching ‘winter driving workshop’ on the Buckinghamshire County Council website.
