Honor Byford & Ian Edwards

Presentation: North Yorkshire Walk-Wise Project

This presentation will look at the development and evaluation of Walk-Wise, a road safety resource developed by eDriving Solutions on behalf of North Yorkshire County Council and the 95 Alive Road Safety Partnership. Walk-Wise aims to improve the road safety knowledge of pre-school children between three and four years of age, appropriate to their needs.

The presentation will explain how the development of the project was based on psychological theory (social learning theory) and the systematic approach taken to evaluation. It will highlight that the approaches used in this project can easily be transferred to other road safety interventions.

Walk-Wise resources include an app aimed at under five-year olds and the use of social media aimed at their parents.

Honor-Byford-new-lgHonor Byford, North Yorkshire County Council

Honor has been a professional road safety officer for more than 30 years, firstly during her military career and latterly in local government. Honor has broad experience of education, training and publicity programmes, team management and career development – both for herself and for her teams.

Her team in North Yorkshire is multi disciplinary, combining expertise in data analysis, road safety education, training and publicity with sustainable travel planning and development advice with the school crossing patrol service. Her team is closely integrated with local and specialist casualty reduction highways engineering, transport planning and the county’s education service.
Honor previously managed a combined road safety education and engineering team in Brighton and Hove. With more than 20 years’ experience of working successfully within a variety of road safety partnerships in southern England and, latterly, North Yorkshire, she has a good knowledge of the profession both in this country and in Europe. Honor  believes in the value of effective partnership working, innovation and progress but also in maintaining the values of proven programmes where they are shown to be the best means to a safety education end.

Ian Edwards, eDriving Solutions

EDWARDS

Ian Edwards is a Director of eDriving Solutions Ltd. (the company is in the process of rebranding as New View Consultants Ltd.) and has been involved in road safety for over 20 years. Ian has worked in both the private and public sectors, on a wide range of road safety initiatives. These have included the EU-funded HERMES project, the development of fleet materials for a multinational company and work for national governments. Recently Ian helped the RSGB Academy to develop the Road Safety Practitioner’s Foundation Course and a Behavioural Change Course.

As well as being a qualified driving instructor Ian holds a MSc. in Social Research and Evaluation and a Diploma in Traffic Accident and Safety Management.

Ian’s research interests include:

  • The use of e-learning in road safety
  • The application of behavioural change techniques
  • Young drivers.

As well as the Walk-wise Kids project Ian’s current projects include:

  • The development of a pre-CBT intervention
  • The development of e-learning related to 20 mph zones
  • Older driver materials.

Ian has also developed a bespoke evaluation tool for road safety professionals called RS-evaluate.