At PARAQUAD SA, we believe that it is not only our role to provide services to those who have sustained a spinal cord injury, but to raise awareness of the common causes of these injuries and work with the South Australian community to prevent them wherever possible.

The PARAQAUAD SA Safe Driving Campaign aims to promote safe driving practices to young people, who account for 28% of all road fatalities and 27% of serious injuries, as well as encouraging parents to become safer drivers and role models for their children. 

The Roads 2 SurvivalTM program was initially developed in Australia by Dr. Bill Griggs, AM ASM, Director of Trauma Services at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Regional Ambulance Service Medical Officer for the SA Ambulance Service and Past President of the Australasian Trauma Society. Subsequently, there has also been major input from teenagers, parents and many other concerned individuals and organisations.

The Parent-Young Person Safe Driving Agreement was developed with major input from young people. It involves 5 key elements: Discussion, Trust, Family, Responsibility, and Choice. Importantly, it asks for commitments from the parent(s) as well as from the son/daughter.

The Roads 2 Survival Safe Driving initiative also has agreements to address other family/driving situations such as:

School-Parent-Child Road Safety Agreement

Peer Group-Young Person Safe Driving Agreement

New-Baby Family Safe Driving Agreement

To download one of these agreements please click here.

On Monday On Monday 14th September 2009, PARAQUAD SA and Dr. Bill Griggs AM ASM – Head of Trauma at the Royal Adelaide Hospital – officially launched our ongoing Safe Driving Campaign due to our concerns with the state’s recent horror road toll. PARAQUAD SA’s ongoing Safe Driving Campaign is designed to promote discussion within the family unit of the need for road safety, to encourage parents to drive in a more responsible fashion as role models for future drivers and targets young drivers and their peer groups. The focus of the campaign is the Parent-Young Person Safe Driving Agreement, which was developed by Dr. Griggs as part of the Roads 2 Survival program, in consultation with teenagers, parents and road safety organisations.

The launch featured Prince Alfred College students, 16 year old learner drivers Phil Harford and Duncan Soang, entering into Safe Driving Agreements with their families to drive home the road safety message. The state’s major sporting clubs/codes came together to support the launch and show their sport’s support for road safety, including representatives from the Adelaide Crows, Port Power, SA Redbacks, Adelaide 36ers, Adelaide Thunderbirds and Football Federation SA. The launch was extremely successful and received strong media support from Channels 9, 7 and the ABC, and radio stations FIVEaa, MIX, Triple M, ABC and Cruise.

Due to the overwhelming support for the Adelaide campaign and launch, PARAQUAD SA was able to negotiate the donation of airtime on WIN Television to screen the television commercial regularly over the next 3 months. On Friday 18th September, PARAQUAD SA and Dr. Griggs officially launched the Regional Safe Driving Campaign at WIN Television studios in Mt. Gambier. The launch featured Mt. Gambier Year 12 students Jessi Blok and Sam Laucirica entering into Safe Driving Agreements with their families to drive home the regional road safety message. The launch received strong media support from WIN Television, ABC South East and The Borderwatch newspaper. The positive results of initial campaign from September to December 2009 include:

Over 460 Parent-Young Person Safe Driving Agreements (SDAs) downloaded during the initial 3-month campaign from PARAQUAD SA and Roads 2 Survival web-sites.
Over 1240 SDAs downloaded in total during the initial 3-month campaign from PARAQUAD SA and Roads 2 Survival web-sites.
On the same period from the previous year, crashes involving young people were down, with a 12.5% decrease on the same time previous year among 16-19yo and 25.73% down among 20-24yo, and in our target adult market (parents) crashes involving those 40-49yo were down 12% and 50-59yo down 6.36%. Whilst we acknowledge that the campaign cannot necessarily take full credit for these figures, we do feel that they are significant.
Roads 2 Survival web-site daily hits increased from an average of 500 before the campaign to 830 on average during the campaign – www.roads2survival.com.au
PARAQUAD SA web-site traffic increased 3-fold
At the end of December 2009, ‘road safety’ was the top search phrase on PARAQUAD SA's web-site.

For more information about the Safe Driving Agreements and the campaign, please contact PARAQUAD SA on (08) 8355 3500.