WITH summer fast becoming a distant memory, a road safety group is turning its attention to the dangers of winter driving.

The Herefordshire Road Safety Group is hard at work preparing county motorists for the many hazards dark and icy conditions can pose.

“It is time now to get the message out that road conditions can change dramatically as we approach the darker evenings and, eventually, the winter months,” said Peter Miles, who chairs the group.

“People often don’t make the transition from summer to winter, which can include everything from having the correct tyres, to driving slower in wet and icy conditions and leaving more time for journeys.”

The group, co-ordinated through the Herefordshire Community Safety and Drugs Partnership, includes members from the county’s emergency services, advance motoring experts and an accident engineer.

Its aim is to reduce the number of deaths and serious and minor injuries on county roads by sharing information and knowledge from group members’ own day jobs.

This can vary from highlighting accident blackspots to educating road users.

And the value of its work has become increasingly prominent over the past months following a spate of fatal accidents on the county’s roads.

Figures gathered by the group show that, over the past four years, drivers aged between 17 and 30 have been involved in more than half of all road accidents in Herefordshire.

Even more striking is that on average, and again based on four-year figures, 54 drivers in the same age bracket are killed or seriously injured in the county each year.

One of the group’s key focuses is on road experience. Each year Herefordshire Advanced Motorists runs four Skill for Life courses featuring theory evenings and drives with qualified observers.

Mary Bevan, an action group member and chair of Herefordshire Advanced Motorists, said they were in the process of forming a young drivers group, open to 17 to 30-year-olds, which would concentrate on the practical and theory sides of advanced driving.

But it isn’t just those behind the wheel the group focuses on. Each year, it helps run Crucial Crew, a practical course for Year 6 children throughout the county, which includes helping youngsters make responsible decisions on issues such as social and personal safety.