UPS Road Code

Youth Scotland delivers Road Code, the UPS Foundation’s global innovative road hazard awareness programme.

A young person wears a VR headset and attempts to drive a vehicle

Youth Scotland delivers Road Code, the UPS Foundation’s global innovative road hazard awareness programme.

Workshops use experience ‘behind the wheel’ of a driving simulator. The focus of the course is on passenger safety, with an aim of increasing confidence around young people speaking up in potentially dangerous situations.

UPS drivers are recognised year after year as being among the safest drivers on the road. With more than 5,000 UPS’ers who have gone at least 25 years accident free, safe driving is a core competency at UPS.

Road safety is an issue of global concern. Each year, 1.3 million people are killed on roads around the world. In the United States, motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death among teenagers according to the World Health Organisation

(*)There is a wealth of research and casualty data showing that young drivers – particularly young male drivers – are at a much higher risk of crashing than older drivers.  They are therefore more at risk of losing their lives or being seriously injured on the road, often killing or injuring their young passengers or other road users too. Road crashes are the biggest single killer of young people in the UK and worldwide [1]. Young drivers are involved in in in four fatal and serious crashes, despite only making up one in eight driver licence holders [2].Other data from the UK shows that:

  • An 18-year-old driver is more than three times as likely to be involved in a crash as a 48 year-old [3]
  • One in five new drivers has a crash within six months of passing their test [4]
  • Young male drivers have much higher crash rates than young female drivers [5]
  • Young male drivers aged 17-20 are seven times more at risk than all male drivers – but between the hours of 2am and 5am their risk is 17 times higher [6]

(*) Source BRAKE.ORG.UK     http://www.brake.org.uk/info-resources/info-research/road-safety-factsheets/15-facts-a-resources/facts/488-young-drivers-the-hard-facts

Fortunately, many teenage motor vehicle crashes are preventable, and proven strategies can improve the safety of young drivers on the road. To address this issue, we created UPS Road CodeTM, a state-of-the-art interactive program that brings UPS’s safe driving techniques and methods to young drivers around the world.

  • UPS volunteers present classroom instruction to young people ages 13-18 in areas including
  • UPS driving “code” or habits, used by all UPS drivers;
  • Consequences of hazardous and distracted driving;
  • Identifying road hazards on an interactive computer-based game; and
  • Test driving skills on a virtual simulator