Roadskill

Take control.

Every day our firefighters are called to road crashes where they have to cut the victims free from the wreckage.

Our presence usually indicates the crash is serious and ambulance staff need help to get to the victims. Many people are surprised to find out we’re called to around 1,200 of these crashes every year.

If these victims are really lucky, they can escape with no serious injuries. But often the results are shocking, even for our seasoned staff.

But this only strengthens our commitment to help road users develop their skills and make them safer on the road.

We do this through a number of routes:

Education

On any school day one of our team will be out delivering our road safety programme to teenagers. This is a key audience for us - the next generation of road users.

Our Biker Down project has invited motorcyclists to take part in road safety sessions at local fire stations. These are led by our Firebike team, and remind riders about basic maintenance and accident prevention, as well as life saving first-aid training in case of a crash.

In the community

We put on public demonstrations of how we deal with typical car crashes. Actors take the seats of a 'crashed' car and a local crew will then cut them free from the wreckage. We hold these events in town centres, where people are usually shocked by what they see.

Social media

This offers us the ideal opportunity to have conversations about road safety with thousands of our online followers. We focus on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as our main channels.