Road safety campaign

Summary

This measure involved the development and launch of a coordinated and branded road safety publicity campaign to increase road safety awareness and influence the behaviour in groups of people who are statistically most at risk of being injured in collisions. This was followed by the implementation of innovative road safety engineering measures, at four high risk sites in the CIVITAS area to improve safety.

Implementing sustainable mobility

This measure involved the development and launch of a coordinated and branded road safety publicity campaign to increase road safety awareness and influence the behaviour in groups of people who are statistically most at risk of being injured in collisions.

This was followed by the implementation of innovative road safety engineering measures, at four high risk sites in the CIVITAS area to improve safety.

Initial research was undertaken to identify a) those people most at risk of collisions, b) the sites where they are most at risk, and b) how and why collisions occur. Using this research, designs for road safety solutions were drawn up and implemented. Solutions included changes in lining and signing and a poster campaign.  

Progress

The evaluation for this measure focused on specific target groups and compared social indicators of awareness and acceptance of the publicity campaign, alongside traffic and accident data at the sites of implementation. As the hard changes to infrastructure/street furniture etc. were relatively small scale, the changes in traffic and accident data were unnoticeable, therefore impact of the measure has focused on social awareness and acceptance. 

Key Results:

• Accidents decreased significantly from 60 to 15.
• However people’s perception of safety decreased from 75% to 63%.
• 29% reduction in peak hour traffic flows.

Outcomes

Lessons Learned:

• Obtain robust data collections at the start of the project.
• Consult and inform local community about your proposed solutions.
• Once measures have been implemented, continuing monitoring road safety behaviour to identified any changes or patterns.
• Make sure you get good ‘before’ and ‘after’ surveys, so you can evaluate the success of the measure.
• Communicate with your target audience. Involve them in the design of campaign activities, imagery, for example. – Don’t assume you know what your target audience will respond to.