A TTC Group road safety trainer, who helped 'pioneer' schemes to educate instead of fining motorists in Devon, has been honoured by a leading UK road safety charity.

Martyn Gould is an assistant regional co-ordinator of diversionary education courses run by UK road safety education leader, the TTC Group, for police in Devon and Cornwall.

He was made a Fellow of the Association of Industrial Road Safety Officers (AIRSO) whose aim is to reduce road casualties on the UK’s busy and often congested roads.

Martyn received the award from from Robert Smalley, a Vice President of Airso, as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations at the group’s annual meeting in Oxford.

“It is a great honour and one that I am very proud to receive,” said Martyn (64), of Newton Abbot, Devon, who was involved in the first classes for drivers committing minor motoring offences introduced by Devon County Council in the early 1990’s.

Their driver improvement scheme was adopted nationwide and the forerunner for today’s nationwide education schemes aimed at educating drivers in the classroom to reduce road casualties instead of bringing them before the courts and fining them.

“Road collisions should never become something we accept as an inevitable consequence of mobility. I am pleased that Airso continues to play a key role in supporting road safety professionals and recognising their achievements,” said Airso chairwoman Dr Lucy Rackliff, a lecturer in Transport and Logistics at Aston University in Birmingham who began her career in road safety education and research.

An Approved Driving Instructor, Martyn was instrumental in training hundreds of drivers at the Devon Drivers’ Centre for almost 23 years before joining the TTC Group.

“It was a new driving concept back in the 1990’s to teach motorists who had been involved in a minor collision how to avoid accidents in the future and now 23 years later there are courses run all over the UK to educate drivers and help to continue to reduce the number of road casualties,” said Martyn.

He now liaises with police to ensure the smooth running of speed awareness courses and the National Driver Alertness Scheme.

Praised by Investors in Excellence for being “passionate” about road safety, the TTC Group is one of the largest providers of courses for the National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme (NDORS), an educational alternative to prosecution for some road traffic offences and are at the forefront in delivering drink drive rehabilitation courses.

They also educate professional LGV drivers and the corporate sector as well as helping local authority road safety teams run education courses and teach cycle and pedestrian safety for adults and children.