NASR Safety Seminars

NASR National Safety Officer David Higgins has done a wonderful job in assisting NASR in the area of risk management by conducting various NASR Safety Seminars around the country. David is a qualified Paramedic with over
17 years experience with in Speedway, Formula 1, Champ Cars, V8 Supercars and Targa Tasmania. His continual enthusiasm for improving work practices and rescue procedures at Australian Speedway's is a credit to him and a great benefit to our sport.

Higgins learnt how important it is to be prepared the hard way when he saved John Cross from a burning Sprintcar at the now defunct Newcastle Motordrome in 1998. “I don’t believe we (the Newcastle safety team) were prepared for what we found in 1998 and we all agreed that instead of being critical to learn form our mistakes, how do we fix them. That is what gave me the motivation to go away and start an initial safety seminar at Newcastle.”

Unbeknown to Higgins, David Lander and Sue Gibson (Newcastle promoters) invited NASR founder John Hughes to the seminar. “I had no idea who NASR was or who John Hughes was. This nice, polite, well dressed man was in the crowd along with 70 other people and at the end he came up and introduced himself and said ‘we like what we have seen today, can we take it in to our sport on a national basis."

“We have had over 20 NASR Safety seminars now and there has been an excess of 1000 officials trained so I think that is a major step forward. All the work I have done is voluntary and I would not change that. I believe you have to give something back to the sport. This weekend was sensational; to be in a room with a group of people with the qualifications and expertise of this level can only make the sport go ahead. My work involves dealing with a situation when is occurs, the 5 P’s: Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. So if you have your house in order and your equipment in order and have good motivated, well trained, equipped people, when an incident occurs that’s when we step up,” said Higgins.

NASR Members and interested parties are invited to attend a NASR Safety Training Seminar that are held a various locations across the country. All groups involved in speedway event management are encouraged to attend, including track operators, stewards, officials, drivers and safety crews.

All participants will be involved in the morning presentations, while the safety teams will break into their relevant track groups for practical exercises in the afternoon. An administrative session will also be held in the afternoon for track operators, stewards and other officials. The Seminar's provide a fantastic opportunity to improve awareness and skills with activities including practical exercises on vehicle extrication techniques and fire fighting. All participants will be given a National Certificate of Participation and a NASR Safety Team patch in recognition of attending the day.

For further enquiries or to confirm attendance please phone NASR Competition Manager, Paul Trengove on (08) 8139 0777 or email competition@nasr.com.au.