Ljubljana Road Safety Charter Workshop: Nursing Students learn first-hand about Road Safety

15 June 2015 10:00 – 13:00
School of Nursing Ljubljana, Poljanska street 61, 1000
Ljubljana
Slovenia

Organiser

Zavod Varna Pot
Nursing students at a Ljubljana, Slovenia high school joined in the Slovene European Road Safety Charter workshop organized in collaboration with the Zavod Varna Pot (the Safe Journey Institute), where the student’s sensibility to road safety was put into practice. The June 15th workshop was organised in two parts; in the first, students were divided into 5 working groups where they discussed issues related to the importance of respecting traffic rules. Moderators engaged the groups in didactic games which got the conversation rolling between students. Their nursing education was a positive factor in their knowledge of the dangers of mixing drinking and driving, and the students found the exercise where they wore ‘drunk glasses’ particularly interesting. Concentration exercises and a reaction time test got the nurses thinking about factors such as mobile phone use and physical states which negatively affect a person’s ability to concentrate and maneuver safely.
The 160 participating students were gathered together for the second half of the workshop, where Martine Aitken from the European Road Safety Charter Team , introduced the students to the platform. From there, students were shown statistics on the number of road victims both in Slovenia and in the European Union. This was followed by a video presentation and discussion of the causes and consequences of road accidents. The workshop then concluded with a touching and encouraging personal talk given by a young girl who had been the cause of a serious road accident a few years earlier. She transmitted to the students how the accident had completely changed her life and affected her health. Students listened with interest to her story, asking questions about her memory, feelings and recovery, as she explained how road accidents not only impact the people directly involved, but leave a mark on their family and friends.