Most young people are killed or seriously injured in road crashes so the question is: how do we hit home that risk-taking driving is a fool’s game?
The wheels of law making are slow with legislators reluctant to engender rules that will seem to be too punitive – the Graduated Driving License (GDL) being a case in point, even though many parents whose teenage children have died in avoidable road crash fatalities, either as inexperienced drivers or as their passengers, think it an invaluable common sense approach to encourage novice drivers to fortify their driving skills and risk assessment competence, post licence, for their own protection and that of their passengers, rather than leave it to chance and the quick testosterone fixes in the name of long-awaited freedom.
Therefore, road safety education must be an integral component of a nation‘s strategy to decrease young casualties. In the UK, since the early 2000s, a professionally run initiative called Safe Drive Stay Alive (SDSA), with which George has been involved from the outset, as onstage presenter, and organiser, has worked with hundreds of schools to invite young novice drivers, the 16–18-year-olds, to understand where their vulnerabilities lie and how to mitigate them by adhering to safer and more responsible driver attitudes.
The power of SDSA comes from the presenters’ own factual and unemotional re-telling of real fatal or serious injury stories involving novice drivers and their passengers i.e. from the emergency respondents in the LAS, the FB, the SCI/FCI; and from the bereaved and/or seriously injured. The story-telling is accompanied by road safety messages i.e. the Don’ts that kill and injure: speed, distracted driving, mobile use, driving without a seat belt, drink/drug driving and while tired, amongst others. However, the final message is, and has to be, that the decision to Safe Drive Stay Alive will always be up to each individual.
With the decision in London to use funding for other class-based road safety initiatives, George looked for private sponsorship to introduce SDSA outside London. CEMEX provided the sponsorship, so SDSA ran successfully at Rugby School for a number of years. In 2025, with continued sponsorship from CEMEX, George took the show to St Clement Danes School in Hertfordshire where it was shown on 17 November to four hundred 6th Form students, and teachers. As ever, feedback has been positive with comments ranging from expressions of gratitude to “excellent” and “incredibly impactful”; CEMEX Corporate Affairs Manager saying that “It was a genuine pleasure to attend the production and I was incredibly moved by it, you could feel the power of it in the room.”
For this is what SDSA is about: conveying road safety messages in such a gripping way that they will have a better chance of being assimilated and remembered longer-term.
If responsibly managed and scripted, SDSA continues to be the most powerful education tool for students and novice drivers that ought not to be overlooked.
Encouraged by the feedback, each time he and his team have shown SDSA, George will now seek to expand use of the programme, to explain its structure, the thinking behind it, how to update it and make it affordable.
In the meantime, George’s gratitude to CEMEX for its continued sponsorship and support; and to his regular production and onstage team that includes:
All Media Works, Romford
DJ and show MC Paul Lyttle – Big Ted
LAS Safeguarding Specialist Natalia Croney
Met Chief Inspector Craig Hands
FB Daniel Foster
Martin Golding, seriously injured survivor of a road collision
The film, produced by All Media Works and shown with permission, is a promo of the event that was organised by George Atkinson BEM and took place on 17 November 2025 at St Clement Danes School, Hertfordshire.
Anyone interested in SDSA for their School, please message me.
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