Road safety charity Brake backs joy-riding film (From York Press)

Road safety charity Brake backs joy-riding film

1:20pm Thursday 19th February 2009

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A NATIONAL road safety charity has thrown its weight behind The Press’s Live Now, Drive Later campaign.

Brake, which praised the newspaper’s hard-hitting movie highlighting the dangers of joy-riding, said it would advertise the film on its website, where it would tell people how they could get copies of it.

Brake, which aims to prevent death and injury on the roads and to care for people bereaved or affected by serious injury in a road crash, said its website received 120,000 hits a month.

Fiona Mortimer, a general manager at Brake, said: “I thought the film was very good – certainly very shocking at the end, which gets the message across to people.

“Young people do need to be shocked into realising that they’re not invincible, and that these things do happen. Cars are a very dangerous place to be.”

The DVD was filmed after an inquest heard how joy-riding led to the deaths of three people in a head-on collision in Stockton Lane, York.

As well as interviews with relatives of the Stockton Lane crash victims, the film features interviews with road accident victims, such as Annie Greenwood, whose face was badly disfigured in a York accident.

The DVD also includes a fictional dramatisation about a teenager who took his parents’ car and then suffered horrendous injuries when he crashed.

Brake’s move follows Ms Greenwood, 66, urging the charity to champion the DVD.

She said: “I’m absolutely overjoyed because it means we’ll reach more young people, and save young people from horrendous injuries and possibly death.

“Any publicity that can be given to the DVD about the dangers of joy-riding is absolutely marvellous.”

We reported on Saturday how Prime Minster Gordon Brown said he was happy to endorse the campaign.

Conservative Party leader David Cameron has also backed the initiative.

The DVD has been shown at secondary schools across York and North Yorkshire as part of a road safety roadshow.

Many MPs, including Health Secretary Alan Johnson, have agreed to send copies to their local authorities and schools in their constituencies.

Safety campaign heads north of the border

YORK’S Children and Young People’s Champion, Coun James Alexander, has delivered 129 copies of The Press’s Live Now Drive Later DVD to the Scottish Parliament.

The York councillor said he made a copy of the movie for every member (MSP) of the Edinburgh-based parliament.

Every copy of the film was accompanied by a letter, which encouraged MSPs to get the DVD shown in schools across their constituencies and to support the Live Now, Drive Later campaign.

Coun Alexander said: “After I received the backing of City of York Council by making every council leader in the country aware of the campaign, I thought why not also take this further to other elected representatives? Let’s see if Alex Salmond’s administration and Scotland can benefit from this valuable Press campaign.”

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