Speed of Sight charity host an inclusive track day for people who are blind, partially-sighted or have disabilities which prevent them from driving, held at Three Sisters Circuit, Ashton-in-Makerfield. An opportunity to get behind the wheel of a custom built, dual controlled car and drive around the track. The charity, Speed of Sight, founded by Mike Newman who is blind and holds many world records for being the fastest blind driver and his friend John Galloway.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Hi there, my name is Mike Newman. I'm at Three Sisters Race Circuit today in Wigan,
00:05 where we are providing driving experiences for people who live on a day-to-day basis
00:11 with significant disabilities. Unfortunately, the nature of the disabilities means that
00:16 they'll never be in a position to drive normally or take a driver's test.
00:20 They get the chance to experience the exhilaration and excitement of being on the racetrack.
00:26 It can be for the first time, or it could be someone who used to drive, but through
00:32 illness or accident is unable to drive anymore, and we give them the chance to relive that
00:37 exhilaration. I was always very keen on motorsport, from
00:41 a little boy, but to take part in that activity was going to be difficult since I couldn't
00:48 see, but I decided as I got older that I wanted to experience what that exhilaration was like.
00:54 So I started to get into, I understood how I could achieve that, and I managed to be
00:58 very lucky. I've driven some very powerful and fast cars over the years, and lucky enough
01:05 to get some high-speed Guinness World Records.
01:09 Go green when you're up to. Yes? Go, go, go!
01:14 Yay!
01:16 I'm John Galloway, co-founder of Speed of Sight. We're here at Three Sisters Racing
01:31 Circuit, which is our penultimate driving experience of the year, where we provide incredible
01:39 life-changing driving experiences for a community of people who never thought that driving would
01:46 be something that they could do. Which, of course, if you're blind, or you have a life-restricting
01:52 disability perhaps, somewhere up on the autistic scale, autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy,
02:00 stroke, epilepsy, there's a long list of situations from a disability point of view, which would
02:09 normally mean you'd be unable to drive.
02:11 What people tell us, they feel it's freedom, they feel exhilarated, they feel excited,
02:18 they certainly feel happy, but more importantly, they're doing an event, taking part in an
02:26 experience that they never thought was possible, so they ultimately go away thinking, "If
02:32 I can do that, that everyone tells me I can't, then what else is it that I can do?"