In advance of the UN Road Safety Week 8-14 May, Brake the
road safety charity has published a guidance report that aims to
help practitioners and campaigners develop practical approaches
to education interventions on road safety and sustainable
travel.
The Inspire, Inform, Engage report,
produced thanks to support from Suzuki New Zealand, looks at
developing a pragmatic approach to education interventions
related to safe, sustainable, healthy and fair transport, either
in organisational settings such as schools or companies, or
through wider communication campaigns.
The report looks at current research and evidence from
academics in the fields of transport psychology and health
education, and helps practitioners to set realistic outcome goals
and monitor and evaluate against those goals. It discusses the
legitimacy of education and communication as a means to raise
awareness of, and inspire action for, road safety issues, but
also explains recent evidence that long-term attitudinal and
behavioural change is difficult to achieve and measure as a
result of single interventions.
The report is available for free to everyone
at: http://brake.org/category-act2/61-inspire-inform-engage.
Members of Brake Professional, Brake’s service for those working
to reduce incidents involving at-work drivers, can also access it
through www.brakepro.org.
Mary Williams, Brake chief executive
says: “Traditional road safety education and
communication has focused on attitudinal and behavioural change,
which current research shows is difficult to achieve quickly or
through one initiative – it often requires a combination of
things including enforcement and repetition of messaging over
long periods of time. This doesn’t mean that road safety and
sustainable travel education should be abandoned though; it has a
key role to play in informing people about the issues, deepening
their knowledge and inspiring action to help save lives,
including for example campaigning in communities for measures
that slow down traffic. This free report is valuable for a range
of practitioners and campaigners and I encourage anyone who works
in the field, or has an interest in this topic, to access
it.”
Gary Collins, General Manager of Automobile
Marketing at Suzuki New Zealand says: “Suzuki is
delighted to be supporting Brake. This guidance report will
be an excellent tool for practitioners and campaigners to use in
developing their road safety initiatives. We want drivers to get
to their destinations safely, so knowing what messages work and
how best to communicate them is important.”
Brake is supporting the fourth UN Global Road Safety Week
(8-14 May), which calls on everyone to Save Lives #SlowDown and
supports interventions to reduce traffic speed, through measures
such as 20mph zones in communities. Organisations and individuals
around the world are encouraged to get involved by organising
activities or simply pledging to slow down. Find out more
at www.unroadsafetyweek.org.
Brake’s activities as part of the UN Week also
include:
Slow Down primary school competition UK – see www.brake.org.uk/postercomp
Road Safety Week with the theme slow down –
see www.roadsafetyweek.org
