Tuesday last week was an emotional day which started with being privileged to be on hand at Highlands Motorsport Park when the Street Smart driver education programme was relaunched with the massive help of the Tony Quinn Foundation.

I have always been a big supporter of Street Smart. If you haven’t heard of it, it is a programme that gives young drivers practical, hands-on, cognitive-based driving experience that, since its launch in 2018, has shown over 2000 young drivers how to stay safe on our roads.

The challenging economic environment forced the not-for-profit Charitable Trust that ran the programme to go into hibernation in March 2022.

Then a tragedy occurred that changed everything, with the death of seventeen-year-old Kelan Stroud in the Cromwell Gorge in March. 

In an incredibly brave and thoughtful response to an indescribable loss, Kelan’s family set up a Give-a-Little page to raise funds to put, in their hope, two or three kids through a defensive driving course to help other families avoid their devastation. 

That page has raised over $20,000. But that was only the beginning. 

In launching the page, the family reached out to the unstoppable Josie Spillane, group CEO of Tony Quinn’s Motorsport Park’s in New Zealand which includes Highlands. 

This then led to Tony Quinn getting involved, bringing Supercars CEO Shane Howard, and Street Smart trustee Greg Murphy alongside to form a partnership to make a life-saving difference in New Zealand. 

End result, on Tuesday morning, with the almost unbelievable injection of $750,000 from the Tony Quinn Foundation, Street Smart was reborn.

It was incredibly emotional to sit in a room full of young drivers about to undertake their days training and to watch their faces as Kelan’s mother Tracy talked of who Kelan was and the impact of his loss on his family. 

People’s courage can be breathtaking sometimes and I think it a fair chance that her talk alone to those kids stopped crashes sometime in the future from ever happening.

A weird juxtaposition happened later that day as I was in a vehicle heading toward the Māniatoto and passed two crashes that both looked very nasty, but fortunately did not result in serious injury as far as I am aware. 

It has been a hell of a week on the roads and I’m not sure if next week is going to be much better. 

It doesn’t matter whether you are young or old, inexperienced or been driving for years, it is just not possible to be too careful on our roads.