September Review
Well after a steady August for E-YARD, September was somewhat busier!
The month started with the groups first RoADAR pass of the month with Alwyn getting his full Golden Wings just before the monthly meeting at East Coast M/C World.
A great start to the month for him, and the group.
After congratulations at the meeting, general business was conducted, with another presentation on aspects of RoadCraft by Chris Hood.
This months topic was a look at Hazards and how to deal with them.
The twenty or so members got involved in discussions and examples of Hazards and the night flew by!
What was apparent was that cyclists seemed to be the bain of most other road users as mobiles Hazards!
RoSPA as an organisation have been involved in initiatives to raise awareness of the ever growing populace of older drivers and a series of documentaries commenced looking at "100 Year Old Drivers", where drivers and motorcyclists approaching or having reached a century are examined by RoADAR examiners.
The same issue has also been identified by Safer Roads Humber Partnership, and E-YARD were invited to attend a conference at K-COM Stadium as partners looking at ways to raise awareness of older drivers and how best to support them from training, assessment and medical points of view.
Dave Pattenden and Julian Taylor represented the group on Thursday 7th September.
They were joined by representatives from Safer Roads Humber partnership members such as Fire Service and Police, Local Highways and Medical Health Care.
RoSPA's Experienced Driver Assessment programme was promoted and will form part of an ongoing joint approach.
The group had also been asked to give a presentation to the local Hull Rotary Club on Tuesday 5th on the activities of E-YARD and advanced driving. As this group is largely made of older drivers the presentation fitted in nicely with the theme!
Julian Taylor represented the group at this meeting and enjoyed a free lunch into the bargain!
The Safer Roads conference however, formed part of a bigger event, the UKRO (United Kingdom Rescue Organisation) Challenge, which took place over the weekend.
Primarily a challenge between various rescue/search organisations with various practical scenarios being assessed and judged, and techniques being developed, the event was broadened to promote general roads safety, motorcycling, health management and of course, older drivers awareness.
Dave Pattenden staffed the Mature Drivers stand whilst Alwyn and Guy Gregory (with some assistance from Geoff Blackburn from our sister group, West Yorkshire RoADAR) staffed the Motorcycling display with Chris Hood flitting between the two and securing drinking vessels for everyone...
The event gave E-YARD a chance to engage with an audience that had maybe not been aware of the group.
It was also an excellent opportunity to forge our relationship as partners of Safer Roads Humber
Whilst this event was taking place, John and Rosie were engaged in supporting the final BikeSafe workshop of 2017 at Beverley. This was an extended two day event which again afforded a great opportunity to recruit new members.
Plenty of training sessions have also taken place this month, with our tutors all being out and about with associates from both disciplines.
Rosie was particularly active, taking Dave Hardwick out on back to back sessions after a day out with Andy Trevor and also Dave Knowles! The girl is a machine!
John meanwhile, amongst other training, got Guy Gregory up to test standard resulting in Guy becoming a fully fledged RoADAR member when he took his test on the last day of the month! Well done!
E-YARD membership also continued to grow this month with Paul Bateman and Donald Hooker joining the group, looking forward to commencing their training, and seeing them at the monthly meetings.
A small group of members are heading to Scotland for some training and socialising in October. No doubt a full report will be included in the October Review!
All the subjects covered in this review are covered in more detail on blogs should you wish to read more about our activities.
