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Poem Competition Presentation

Awards for best poems on ‘Staying Safe in the Car’

The Annual Road Safety Illustrated Poem Competition was another resounding success for many young people from Gwent. The winners claimed their prizes at an evening event at County Hall Cwmbran on Tuesday 17th June.

A total of 527 poems were entered from junior and senior pupils across the Gwent region into this year’s Competition, which was run jointly by the Road Safety Team at Capita Symonds and Heddlu Gwent Police. The standard of entries was very high with some innovative ideas and high levels of thought, motivation and common sense.

The prizes and certificates were presented by Mike Tonge, Chief Constable of Heddlu Gwent Police, who was delighted to have his photograph taken afterwards with each of the children and their poems.

The highest number of senior entries came from Duffryn Comprehensive School, Newport and Vicky Carey, the English teacher collected their award from Mr Tonge. Vicky said:-

“We found the project to be of great interest across all the year groups that entered. The year 9 and 10 groups were very aware of the dangers and very sensible in their approach to the task. It was surprising how many features the pupils were able to recognise in relation to in car safety.”

Vicky continued, “However, many of our younger pupils did tend to focus on the main features they see on TV – driving too fast, drink driving, etc. It would be nice if there was greater awareness made of the distractions that can occur in the car – talking to the driver, asking them to look at something other than the road, music blasting, eating and drinking at the wheel, mobile phones, etc. The teachers involved in this competition often had to point out these obvious factors that impact on driving and in car safety. It is unfortunate that advertisements and publicity tend to focus on accidents and car crashes than the factors that actually cause the incidents.”