7:45pm Martin Clarke -Drive Safe Arrive Safe

Club meeting 12th February 2014

An extremely informative presentation was give by Martin (Nobby) Clarke titled "Drive Safe Arrive Safe". Nobby is an ex colleague and friend of Neil Brown (somebody has to be) with 14 years army and 23 years police experience 19 of which were spent in the traffic division. Now working as a traffic safety officer for Balfour Beatty and having identified numerous safety issues within the company he also gives talks and training to outside organisations with the aim of highlighting to drivers potential risks in order to improve road safety.

Highlighting the dangers of hands free telephone calls (despite being legal) and pointing out simple measures that we should all take such as checking tyre pressure regularly, not running out of fuel and simple things like having water in a washer bottle (an endorse-able offence) all of which have contributed to or caused serious and even fatal accidents on our roads.

The presentation included slides and videos finishing with a sobering list and photographs of a few of the many people (some well known) who have died on our roads. The presentation came a little too late for some Rotarians to avoid penalty points and on the same day that our president had been on a driver awareness course for speeding. Nonetheless the talk gave food for thought for us all and was delivered with good humour and enthusiasm.

Sadly our numbers were significantly depleted, resulting in great difficult for Terry acting as sergeant, to extract significant monies as most of the snitches related to those having wind unable to attend due to the gales.