Year 9 St Edmund's College student Thomas Norris has seen his share of close calls when it comes to pedestrians carelessly walking in front of a car.
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"Quite often I've seen pedestrians cross the road at the wrong time and we've nearly hit them," Thomas said.
It's these situations that the Australian Road Safety Foundation is trying to avoid by taking a new approach to road-trauma prevention through its new national road safety program, Roadset.
With an easy-to-use, eye-catching interface, Roadset is an online interactive program designed to raise awareness and prevent road trauma in children.
Tailored towards year 9 students, Roadset aims to target teens before they get their licence by addressing pedestrian, passenger and cyclist safety - unlike many other road safety programs that focus on those about to get behind the wheel.
Since 2019, 3435 people have died from road accidents, and 40 per cent of them died as pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists, according to the National Road and Safety Strategy.
Roadset founder and chief executive Russell White started the program after learning that road trauma is the biggest killer of children from ages one to 14.
With the goal of the program centered on preparing kids to be better road users, Mr White stressed that addressing these statistics was the foundation to creating the program.
"There are many aspects to road use - I think a lot of times when people think of road trauma they think it's just drivers, but in actual fact it's vulnerable road users that made up nearly half of that fatality rate," Mr White said.
"It's about finding a new way to address road trauma."
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In just this year alone, nearly 37,000 students across Australia have completed or signed up to do the program, with it already being introduced into 19 schools so far in the ACT.
Its popularity among students and teachers comes from its ease of access, colourful and interactive designs and the chance for students to learn on their own.
"This is a good program because it will help younger kids understand what can happen when you're crossing the road and not paying attention," Mr Thomas said.
St Edmund's College head of health and physical education, Joel Richardson, said the program was fantastic as his students responded well to the interface's overall design, appropriate style and ease of use.
"Being a program which allows [students] to go through at their own pace and scaffold their own learning to meet their individual needs, they can have ownership over their own goals." Mr Richardson said.
ACT senator Zed Seselja encouraged families and schools to get on board with the program as a way to bring the statistics down. He said the Commonwealth had granted $2.1 million towards the program.
"Roadset will give these children the capabilities to deal with these challenges and make good decisions when they are pedestrians and later on as drivers, and hopefully save people a lot of trauma and angst," Senator Seselja said.