By Jamie White – Head of Communications
Renault is backing an award-winning safety scheme aimed at reducing the number of serious road accidents in the UK’s fastest county.
Safety initiative CarKraft, based at Silverstone, the home of the British Grand Prix, is helping to improve the driving skills and techniques of people in Northamptonshire.
Renault’s backing for CarKraft is now in its sixth year and joins Northamptonshire Highways, Adrian Flux Insurance and The AA, in lending support to the popular free programme at the Porsche Experience Centre at Silverstone.
Tutors running the events, on Sunday September 20th and Sunday October 11th, are all highly qualified motoring professionals with years of experience of both motor racing and advance driving techniques.
Each course is free of charge and offers drivers a dynamic mix of workshops, allowing them to experience driving on simulated, challenging conditions at a state of the art, purpose built facility in a range of Renault cars, including the All-New Twingo. It also explores the main causes of car crashes, speeding and seat belts.
Drivers aged over 17 will experience the Kick Plate and Ice Hill, which both generate the effect of a loss of wheel traction to explore car control under extreme road conditions, and get an assessed drive on public carriageways with a police driver, who will give tips on advance techniques.
The CarKraft driver improvement scheme started in 2001 and was aimed at young drivers aged 15 to 24 years old. It was awarded a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award in 2006 and was shortlisted for the FirstCar Young Driver Road Safety Awards 2015 ‘Young Driver Campaign of the Year’. Since its inception, more than 3,000 people have benefited from the unique experience which helped reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured in Northamptonshire to an all-time low in 2011.
Last year CarKraft expanded to include non-drivers between the ages of 15 and 25 and licence holders of all ages from anywhere in the UK. The schemes have been hugely popular, regularly over-subscribed and have attracted numerous best practice visits by other local authorities.
Mystery Shopping and Performance Improvement company, Douglas Stafford, has been working with Renault UK for more than 10 years, providing the manufacturer with tailored and bespoke nationwide mystery shopping programmes to include Telephone Mystery Shopping, Email Mystery Shopping and Video Mystery Shopping.
