Secondary student ties road safety into business studies

A Gisborne student explains how road safety concerns anchored her vision for her own learning.

Hayley Lincoln was facing a challenging decision in last year’s Year 13 business studies class at Campion College when inspiration came from her extra-curricular role with Kaitiaki o Ara/SADD, the student organisation that campaigns for road safety.

“We were starting an internal assessment that needed to come up with a marketing plan for a product. I thought then and there that I could incorporate my SADD work within my school studies, and create stickers that could be used within our school SADD team and the SADD National Leaders at colleges around the country.”

Hayley joined Kaitiaki o Ara/SADD in 2021 and became a national leader – one of her main projects was establishing a SADD group at Campion. Then in 2022, she dreamed up the sticker project and could continue working on her passion in class too.

“Being able to link my SADD project with my school curriculum to me was a fantastic idea so I got the best of both worlds. I worked on this SADD project during my Business Studies classes, through my marketing plan and business plan, as well as on a Friday when our school has impact projects. My impact project at school was creating Campion College's SADD team and the road safety stickers.  Doing this allowed me to have even more time to work on this project. Especially as the year got busier and busier.”

Hayley says she wanted to design bumper stickers that would encourage people to think about whether they are driving at the appropriate speed.

"The phrase I came up with is ‘speed thrills and kills’. I wanted to focus primarily on driving within the speed limit, as the faster you go the less time you have to react in any given situation.” 

Aspects of the creative process include:

• coming up with a short and snappy phrase
• collaborating with a SADD staff member to digitise the final design
• fundraising and market research into printing providers.

In the end, Hayley approached local business Live Creative and owner Matt Skuse offered to print the stickers for free. The stickers are now being used by the Campion College community, with more sent to SADD groups around the country.

Supporting resources

Teachers can find many ways to draw on road safety issues as a curriculum context through resources published on the Waka Kotahi Education Portal.

These curriculum resources are written by teachers for teachers, and are organised by learning area with units aimed at Years 9-10 as well as NCEA.

Secondary curriculum resources

Road Safety in the Curriculum (Kaitiaka o Ara/SADD)(external link)

SADD blog(external link)

Students on campaign trail to reduce toll on NZ roads (Gisborne Herald)(external link)