Eve Jeffery
Free breath testing and transport information was on offer at the recent Splendour In The Grass festival, and the stats collected from the initiative are in.
At the Keys Please Kiosk, festival-goers were encouraged to party safely and were offered storage for valuables and phone charging.
As part of the The STEER project to improve young driver education , co-organiser Phil Preston told The Echo the kiosk provided over 1,200 voluntary breath tests.
‘Forty-four per cent changed their behaviour after the test and 100 per cent who thought they maybe able to drive home changed their behaviour after a test indicated they were over their legal limit,’ he says. ‘The kiosk positively influenced drivers by creating a person-to-person connection at the coalface’, he said.
‘Regional areas, and the Byron Shire particularly, are disadvantaged by a lack of safe transport options. This results in many young people choosing unsafe transport options.
‘The Keys Please Kiosk may have changed the behaviour of almost 500 patrons thinking about driving over their legal limit. The response was a lot more positive than I expected’, Phil said.
‘The people who came were just so engaged and really responsive.’
For more information vist www.steerproject.org.au.
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