Improving the effectiveness of road safety campaigns: Current and new practices

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe evaluation of campaigns aimed at improving road safety is still the exception rather than the rule. Because of this, ineffective campaigns and campaign techniques are allowed to continue to be utilised without question, while new methods of behaviour modification are often ignored. Therefore, the necessity and advantages of formally evaluating road safety campaign efforts are discussed. This article also describes the pros and cons of some of the more common campaign strategies and introduces a number of new methods that show a great deal of promise for the purpose of road safety campaigns. In order to infuse the field of road safety campaigning with such new insights into road user behaviour and behavioural modification, one should look beyond the confines of road safety campaign standards and learn from the knowledge gained in other disciplines such as economics and social psychology. These new insights are discussed in terms of their implications for the future of road safety campaigns.

Assessing the relationship between the Driver Behavior Questionnaire and the Driver Skill Inventory: Revealing sub-groups of drivers

“…Campaigns are widely used in order to change attitudes towards road safety. However, there are currently no clear cut methods available for effectively changing attitudes (Hoekstra & Wegman, 2011). Nevertheless, this study underlines that the area of attitude change and evaluation of methods for attitude change, is crucial and should be explored further.…”

Teenage trespass on the railways – a systems approach

“…One issue mentioned by participants, was that young males may not think (or care) that rail safety is something that could affect them, and may therefore not be concerned about their own welfare. However, previous research also suggests that young males can be affected by hearing how their own behaviour could impact the lives of the people closest to them, those who they love and care about (Hoekstra and Wegman, 2011). This includes younger siblings, parents or girls in the same age group.…”

A Theory-Based Approach to the Development and Evaluation of Public Education Messages Aimed at Social Interactive Technology Use on Smartphones among Young Drivers

“…Road safety advertising campaigns incorporating positive emotional appeals (e.g., humour) have been used in Australia and other countries, such as the Netherlands (Hoekstra & Wegman, 2011;SWOV, 2009). The effectiveness of these positive emotional appeals has been investigated in the Australian context (Lewis, Watson, & White, 2013) and in accordance with the Extended Parallel Process…”

“…Criticism focuses on the lack of theory guiding its development (in particular, the development of message content), failure to segment the audience, failure to gain an understanding of the target population, lack of guidance on what constitutes effective message content, no scientific method guiding advertisement development, unrealistic exposure to messages, and lack of scientifically rigorous evaluations measuring different outcomes (e.g., Cismaru, 2014;Hoekstra & Wegman, 2011;Lewis et al, 2009;Slater, 1999;Stead, Tagg, MacKintosh, & Eadie, 2005;Tay, 2005c).…”

“…Rigorous scientific evaluations of road safety countermeasures, however, are not common (Hoekstra & Wegman, 2011;Wundersitz & Hutchinson, 2011b). The meta-analyses that do exist investigating the effectiveness of threat appeals eliciting fear report varied results and the validity of these results is often limited due to significant methodological limitations (Carey, McDermott, & Sarma, 2013).…”