Introduction
Durham County Council is accountable for around 500,000 people in County Durham. As part of the wide range of public services it provides to the people in the county, it runs a number of driver and road safety awareness programmes. These programmes are run in conjunction with the Police and Fire Service and the Qwizdom handsets are used to test the effectiveness of information delivery and to engage the attendees.
Aims
The road safety events ran by Durham Council involve approximately 1200 15 and 16 year olds over a 3 week period. The organisers required a way of assessing the effectiveness of the information provided by testing knowledge at the start and end of each day. They also wanted a way of shortening the process of collating delivering the paper-based results for these events as this process was often taking week.
Solution
The Qwizdom Response System has been rolled out by Durham County Council for their driver and road safety programmes. As part of their ‘Wise Drive’ programme the Qwizdom handsets are used at the start of the day to assess knowledge and attitudes to driver related road safety. The same questions are then posed at the end of each day to compare the results. The fact that the feedback can be set up as anonymous, means that the assessment of attitudes is very accurate as people are not afraid to answer honestly.
The Qwizdom System is portable meaning the council are also able to use it for their Road Safety Roadshows which they take to schools and colleges across County Durham.
“We find that Qwizdom gives us instant access to information about our effectiveness as communicators of the road safety message. It helps to bridge the generation gap. The youngsters have no issues with the kit at all and they are comfortable and enthusiastic about using the equipment. Even sceptics have been converted and are impressed by the kit’s reliability and robustness.”
Tony Flory / Driver Training Services Officer, Durham County Council