Teenagers left Wiltshire College in Chippenham in a stunned silence after a visit from the Safe Drive Stay Alive roadshow.

Nearly 450 students from Lackham were given a sobering dose of reality when they heard first-hand accounts from two mothers who lost their sons in car accidents.

The road safety campaign, co-ordinated by Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service, shows a hard-hitting film to make teenagers think twice before showing off in their first car.

Graphic footage, demonstrating what the police, paramedics and firefighters go through before casualties go to hospital, was accompanied by talks from family members left behind.

Mum Clare Brixey spoke about losing her son Ashley in a crash at Limpley Stoke, near Bradford on Avon, ten years ago.

Ashley, 20, was a back-seat passenger in a car that landed upside down in a swimming pool after the driver, twice over the legal alcohol limit, lost control. Both the driver and a passenger were thrown from the car into the pool and managed to escape, but Ashley was knocked unconscious and drowned.

Mrs Brixey said: “My personal testimony brings it closer to home and it stays with them. It makes them realise it could happen to them, they’re not invincible.”

Claire Barnett, of Semington, also lost her 20-year-old son on Wiltshire’s roads. James, who was a landscape gardening design student at Lackham College, died in a motorbike crash in 2002. A tree is planted in his memory at Lackham.

A car in front of him on the A361 had crashed into a telegraph pole and its wires hit James at neck height.

Mrs Barnett said: “I wanted to do something after James died. Every time I do this, my son and I save at least one life.”

Crash survivor Simon Johnstone, 35, spoke of how he was left brain-damaged and paralysed after crashing his Volvo on his return home to Chippenham from Northampton at 18. He had to learn to walk, talk and eat all over again.

After ten years of intensive surgery and rehabilitation he still walks with difficulty.

Mr Johnstone, who lives in Salisbury, said: “I went out of the sun roof and under the Transit. I couldn’t talk or move for two-and-a-half years.

“That could have been prevented.”