Half a thousand schoolchildren attend a rescue drill in Vícar

Two vehicles collide and there are several victims with injuries of varying severity. This is the starting point of the drill that this Friday brought the Andalusian Congress on Road Incidents in Vícar to a close. The Plaza Anfiteatro in La Gangosa hosted the exercise before nearly half a thousand fifth-grade primary school students from all the schools in the municipality. Members of the Vícar Local Police, 061, Firefighters and Civil Protection took part in the rescue, together with students from the Emergency and Safe and Sustainable Mobility module of the La Gangosa Training Centre. The aim was to check how coordination and cooperation between the security forces and the health services that attend an incident work on the ground.

The exercise was held after the approval of the good practice guide for the immediate care of victims of road incidents, a document agreed by entities, police forces, health institutions and civil protection that gathers the proposals of each of them. According to the City Council, it is the first exercise of this scale carried out after the approval of that guide. The delegated prosecutor for Road Safety in Andalusia, Ceuta and Melilla, Luis Carlos Rodríguez León, described the drill as an "enormous success" and stressed the need to "stop talking about accidents and start talking about road incidents". Rodríguez noted that in these cases it is important to establish a joint command post in the first moments and to guarantee multidisciplinary training. The mayor of Vícar, Antonio Bonilla, positively assessed the conclusions of the two days and stated that the choice of the municipality to organise the congress is "a recognition of our more than twenty years of experience as a pioneering municipality in promoting a culture of safety". The Vícar Road Education programme has been running since 2006 and the Road Education Centre obtained its certification in 2011. The congress was attended by the senior prosecutor of Andalusia, Ana María Tárrago Ruiz, the delegated prosecutors for Road Safety of the eight Andalusian provinces and of Ceuta and Melilla, and more than a hundred police commanders and chiefs from municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants. Members of the Guardia Civil, Andalusia 112 Emergencies, Civil Protection and Firefighters were also present. In addition to the guide, the sessions served to debate unified digital accident reports, the Prosecutor's Office instructions on criminological reports, the use of body cameras as evidence and the regulations on personal mobility vehicles.