Road safety day held for young Devon drivers

Students were able to use simulators during the event

Young drivers in south Devon have been given advice on how to drive more carefully.

Vision Zero South West said the road safety intervention day was due to a recent spate of crashes that involved young drivers and riders in Devon.

In April, a teenager suffered life changing injuries in a single-vehicle crash and Archie George Harris, 17, died following an accident in west Devon in May.

Year 12 students at South Dartmoor Community College used simulators on Tuesday to show the dangers of driving with a mobile phone and driving under the influence.

Police, firefighters, paramedics and the Devon Air Ambulance helped provide the workshops.

Workshops included students being able to test their reactions in a Ford Mustang Mach-E and learning what to do at the scene of a collision.

PC Claire Hurrell said the workshops focused on different aspects of road safety.

She said she was "quite passionate about getting young people to understand that no matter where they are or what they're doing there are consequences to their actions.

"It's a piece of work trying to bring all agencies together to try and raise that awareness with young inexperienced new drivers, so that they have those tools [and] those thought processes in their back pocket when they're out and about driving around," she said.

Alice, 17, said learning that "drivers don't actually see bikes all the time is kind of weird" and Ruby, 17, said it was "pretty scary" to learn that using a mobile phone while driving could "take six points off your licence".