Shoppers witnessed first hand how firefighters save victims from car accidents on Monday and learnt that the biggest cause of accidents was not drink-driving but distractions.
At a city centre fire safety demonstration as part of Road Safety Week, crews asked volunteers to get in the station’s ‘peg car’ to see how they safely remove people from vehicles and cut away the roof.
St Albans area fire safety coordinator Jack Daw said: “The idea is to drive safety into St Albans residents, especially 16-24 year olds, because that’s where we have the largest amount of new drivers.
“We’re also going around to all the schools. We’ve had about a 20 per cent reduction in accidents that the fire service attends and we’re convinced it’s because we go around doing demos.”
He added that one of the biggest causes of accidents was distraction driving: “The biggest one is phones – it’s all about losing that concentration for just a few minutes.”
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