A free 30-minute e-learning tool that aims to provide learner drivers with the skills to save or prolong a life until paramedic care arrives.
Every year on our roads around 1,200 Australians are killed and 44,000 are seriously injured.
Evidence shows that bystander First Aid reduces pre-hospital deaths and severe injury in the critical time it takes emergency services to arrive at the scene.
St John Ambulance Australia is calling for a nation-wide evidence-based approach to post-crash management. This will equip an entire generation of bystanders with the First Aid competencies to help reduce deaths and severe injury on our roads.
Senior Australian of the Year leads the call for change.
Lifelong St John volunteer Val Dempsey has been named 2022 Senior Australian of the Year for her tireless commitment to promoting and delivering First Aid training. She is using her platform to advocate a simple solution to save more lives — let’s make First Aid training a prerequisite for obtaining a driver’s license.
This is a personal mission for Val. Her family was forever changed when bystanders came to help at the scene of her daughter’s car accident but didn’t know what to do. A life was lost. Saving lives through Driver First Aid awareness.
Australia has one of the lowest rates of First Aid training in the world.
Fewer than 5% of Australians have the First Aid knowledge and skills to save a life in an emergency, according to a 2017 Red Cross study. It is in the immediate aftermath of a traffic accident — the first 3 to 5 minutes — when giving life-preserving actions really matter.
Basic online First Aid training — the easy road forward.
Achieving basic First Aid knowledge and skills is not costly, time-consuming, or inaccessible.
St John Ambulance has created a free, nationally available 30-minute online course that gives the Learner Driver First Aid skills that can be applied before paramedic care
arrives.
Our hope is that State and Territory governments will adopt this course into Learner Driver requirements. Compulsory First Aid training has long been a part of Learner Driver training in more than 10 European countries!
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Australia has one of the lowest rates of First Aid training in the world
- Less than five per cent of people are equipped to handle an emergency situation, according to a 2017 Red Cross study.
- After a traffic accident—the first 3 to 5 minutes are critical for life-preserving actions.
- It takes 4 minutes to die from a blocked airway (hypoxia) — the single cause of an estimated 85% of pre-hospital traffic deaths.
- Even in the shortest ambulance response time (9–14 minutes in AU), without immediate first aid, a person with a blocked airway won’t survive.
- Simple actions, such as lifting an unconscious person’s chin to unblock their airway, could save their life.
