Good Egg Safety, which campaigns for better safety knowledge among young drivers, today announced that it is upgrading its UK programme, in the wake of claims that the government is delaying the Graduated Driving Licence (GDL) until after the General Election. Good Egg has appointed Gill Starkie as the programme’s National Education and Training Manager. Good Egg’s new drivers programme has been extensively deployed in schools in Scotland, backed by 19 year old racing driver Christie Doran, and is now looking to extend across England and Wales.
Chief Executive Jan James said today: “We’re bitterly disappointed that the government hasn’t brought forward the Graduated Driving Licence, and now looks like it won’t before the General Election. Building better road safety into the driving test will save lives. I don’t understand why that isn’t a priority.
“The government may be lagging, but we are raising our game. We’ve had huge success in Scotland with our New Drivers programme. Something like ninety percent of the students in our evaluation showed substantial improvements in their safety awareness and knowledge. We now want to push this out across the rest of the UK. To do that we need to get more schools and education authorities on board.
“That’s why we’ve appointed Gill Starkie as our National Education and Training Manager. She’s a brilliant asset to our team, and will help us deliver more courses in more places than ever before."
Gill began her career within the world of Road Safety in 2001. Throughout this time as a Road Safety/Partnership Liaison Officer with West Sussex County Council, she was primarily involved in Education and promoting Partnership working.
Gill said today: "I am looking forward to seeing sustainable changes in opinion and excited about the challenges which lie ahead.”
Gill has worked within all areas of road safety, her main areas of focus were Pre and Young Driver education, Power Two Wheeler education – primarily promoting Bike safe and New Rider Education, Event planning and attendance – promoting road safety.
Gill said today: "I am delighted to have joined Good Egg team. It has been a long sought after aim to find excellent, down to earth, factual and evaluated resources that can be used by all Road Safety professionals nationwide. I am really looking forward to working alongside my new team and engaging with young car drivers, cyclists and motorcyclists.”
New data released on the Good Egg New Drivers programme showed significant safety learning among 800 school students took part in North Lanarkshire. Backed by 19 year old Scottish racing driver Christie Doran, Good Egg’s initiative provides potentially life-saving safety awareness among the group most likely to die or be seriously injured in a road traffic incident. One in five young drivers crash in their first six months of passing the test, and accident statistics show that road traffic incidents are one of the leading causes of death or serious injury in this age group. In the pre/post study, 90% of those attending showed increase safety awareness and knowledge.
The Good Egg Drivers Scheme is supported by a number of partners including Arnold Clark, Road Safety GB, RoadSafe and Brake. Schools and education authorities interested in adopting the programme should contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
