Lighting up prominent landmarks in yellow is an initiative of the Yellow Ribbon Road Safety Alliance, which includes Road Safety Education Ltd and their NZ partners BOC, NZ Steel, Bridgestone and VTNZ, along with Brake – the road safety charity. Loss of life and life changing injuries should never be accepted as a price we pay for the privilege of using our road system.

The Yellow Ribbon Road Safety Alliance asks the community to embrace National Road Safety Week as an opportunity to stand in solidarity with those who have been critically injured or killed, and the loved ones they leave behind, by making a commitment to drive so others survive.

“Death and serious injuries on our roads are all too common and there is a risk we have normalised the price we pay to get to work, visit friends or holiday in our beautiful country. Road Safety Week is a time we can all reflect and pledge to do better, working towards zero lives lost or seriously injured on our roads” says Road Safety Education’s General Manager NZ Maria Lovelock. “We hope by associating the colour yellow with this important cause we will create conversation and action for change through a collaborative approach”.

The theme of Road Safety Week 2022 is Road Safety Heroes. The Yellow Ribbon Road Safety Alliance is getting behind kiwis that through their good efforts seek to reduce the number of lives lost and seriously injured on our roads. We called for nominations from our communities for individuals who go above and beyond in this work and for the first time, we are presenting a Yellow Ribbon Alliance Road Safety Hero Award.

The winner of the first ever Road Safety Heroes award is Sterling Maxwell from SADD (Students Against Dangerous Driving)/Kaitiaki o Ara.

Sterling is from Gisborne. She has been an organisation National Leader and is the first Youth Representative on the SADD board. She conducted research into why young people breach their licence conditions and presented her findings to Waka Kotahi. She was instrumental in forming a Māori advisory group at SADD to make the programme more accessible to rangatahi Māori, which also contributed to the forming of SADD’s new Māori name. Sterling’s involvement covers 7 years of volunteering with the youth-led organisation and this is well deserved recognition for the contribution she has made to road safety.

Nominations came from all over Aotearoa and included:

• Rachel Stubbs from Otorohanga District Council who works passionately in her region running driver licencing programmes, car seat restraint clinics and advertising around fatigue and other risks drivers face.
• Jess Darnley, a National Leader also with SADD/Kaitiaki o Ara, created road safety stickers that could be used by young people on social media channels when messaging on road safety. She created a suite of 25 stickers which have clocked up 13 million global views.

The launch of Road Safety Week was on the evening of Monday 9th May at the Royal NZ Yacht Squadron with Vector Lights Auckland Harbour Bridge and Auckland Sky Tower lighting up as part of the launch. Joining them will be the following icons around the country: The Anzac Parade Bridge Hamilton, #IloveTaupo sign and a light display on the lake, Gisborne Clock tower, Upper Hutt Fantail, Michael Fowler Centre, Oamaru Opera house and Alexandra Clock tower. In addition, a number of businesses and schools will be running wear yellow to work and school days.

ENDS

To find out more contact Maria Lovelock (Secretariat for the alliance) maria@rse.org.nz or phone 021 545 030.

Road Safety Education Limited is a not-for-profit organisation that runs best practice road safety programmes for young people through NZ and Australia and is the secretariat for the Yellow Ribbon Alliance in NZ. To date over 85,000 young people have attended their RYDA programme in New Zealand. For more information, please visit www.rse.org.nz or email maria@rse.org.nz

Maria Lovelock, General Manager New Zealand

M | +64 21 545 030 E | maria@rse.org.nz

PO Box 12876, Penrose, Auckland 1642

W | rse.org.nz

© Scoop Media