The four-day workshop, hosted by Rotary and supported by Tablelands Area Road Safety and the Bathurst Regional Council, aims to reduce death and injury among young people on roads through education.

The Rotary Club fostering Youth Driver Awareness (RYDA) targets 16- to 17-year-olds who are at a stage of their lives where they start to drive or ride in vehicles driven by their peers.

Tablelands area road safety officer Iris Dorsett said that over the four days 556 students will go through the program.

“We have got students from all the Bathurst schools and TAFE as well as from Oberon and Blayney and, for the first time this year, students from Lithgow and Portland,” she said. “The demand for this type of program is really growing.”

RYDA focuses on attitude and awareness with the aim of helping young adults become better people on the road.

Students attend classes about safe stopping distances, hazard perception, safe celebrating and fatigue as well as one on the real cost of owning a car and a powerful presentation by a car crash survivor.

“Students are also shown a video featuring footage of a young lady celebrating her 18th birthday who later died in a crash involving alcohol and excessive speed,” Ms Dorsett said.

For a number of students, the session was overwhelming, some having known a family member or close friend who had died in a car accident.

Young drivers continue to be over-represented in road crash statistics. People under the age of 26 comprise of just 15 per cent of drivers yet are involved in 36 per cent of road fatalities.

A 17-year-old driver with a P1 licence is also four times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than a driver aged 26 or older.

The four-day workshop finishes at Mount Panorama today.