About us
Valerie Platt
Valerie Platt BEd MA is a qualified teacher with over 20 years experience in road safety and road safety education. After early work as a Schools Road Safety Liaison Officer with Essex County Council, she became an Education Advisor with BITER - The British Institute of Traffic Education Research before becoming a Partner in RSN Associates.
She has considerable expertise and knowledge in education, training and publicity. She has written many road safety education (RSE) publications as well as guides for teachers, parents and LA staff on road safety and travel choice issues. She was the author of Making Choices – a DfT teaching resource designed for children transferring from primary to secondary school.
Valerie is experienced in qualitative research techniques including focus groups and face-to-face interviews with both children and adults. Much of her current work involves advising local authorities on strategy development and the implementation of new road safety ETP initiatives.
As well as her experience in research, Valerie has been responsible for organising and running the national road safety officer training courses on behalf of Road Safety GB since their inception. She was a member of the IHT working party that developed the generic Transportation NVQ. She also regularly runs short training courses for local authority road safety staff on a variety of topics.
Andrew Clayton
Andrew Clayton PhD is a psychologist with over 40 years experience in the field of road safety and road safety research. From his original at-scene studies of rural road accidents and other research projects at the Road Accident Research Unit University of Birmingham, he moved to become Director of STAR RIDER – The National Motorcycle Training Scheme. He was then Executive Director of The British Institute of Traffic Education Research for 15 years before taking up his present position as a Partner in RSN Associates.
His specialist fields include the monitoring and evaluation of road safety initiatives. Previous projects include an international review of road traffic law (EU DG VII), a review of road safety education in schools and colleges in the UK (DfT with TRL), an evaluation of the Children’s Traffic Club in Scotland (Scottish Office with TRL), and an evaluation of the DSA Schools Initiative (DfT). He has also written a number of key reviews on topics as diverse as drink / driving legislation and the effectiveness of cyclist training. Recently, he was the UK Project Manager for a DfT-funded evaluation of the alcohol ignition interlock demonstration project.