The latest animated film to be released as part of the TWIST motorcycling campaign features a harassed mum on the school run who, despite her best efforts to focus on the task in hand, is hopelessly distracted by her two boisterous offspring in the rear of the car – with disastrous consequences.
The TWIST campaign encourages riders to take additional post-test training in order to improve their riding skills and learn to anticipate the mistakes made by other road users.
The animated films which are at the heart of the campaign use humour to highlight the dangers bikers face, and the consequences of a collision – irrespective of whose mistake leads to the incident.
The films are designed to attract riders to the TWIST campaign website where there are details of local and regional post test courses across the country.
TWIST2 was launched on 7 April and since then the training pages on the campaign website have been viewed more than 1,000 times.
The latest film, which went live on 25 April, is the second of four in the second phase of TWIST activity.
The first film in the TWIST series, which was launched in May 2013, has now attracted almost 28,000 views on YouTube.
Road safety teams are invited to provide details about training opportunities in their local area for inclusion on the TWIST website – to do so please contact Simon Rawlings, TWIST project manager, on 01379 650112.
In answer to Mark’s question, I am very much in favour of out of the box thinking, but is the industry? The statistics make bleak reading as only 8% of licenced riders have ever taken any form of post test training and about 75% of that is ROSPA/IAM/Bikesafe with the rest made up by race/wheelie schools. From this it is fairly clear that riders generally do not want to take post test training so it does seem rather silly to promote something that nobody wants to buy. Steve Jobs once famously said that “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them” which means that the industry has to find new ways of making people want what it is they are selling.
Duncan MacKillop, Stratford on Avon
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Chris:
All the scenarios used in the TWIST films are derived from Cambridgeshire and Peterborough data relating to motorcycle collisions.
The first film last year used MOSAIC social profiling to identify the riders involved in collisions and caricatured the three rider groups that were most prevalent in the data using other research into rider profiling to fill in the gaps and enhance the ‘characters’.
For this latest set of films the drivers involved were profiled and caricatured in the same way and the data was also interrogated to establish the types of manoeuvre that are most common in vehicle-motorcycle collisions in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. In the case of the latest set of films the three profiled drivers have had stereotypical distracters applied for the purpose of entertainment.
Matt Staton, Cambs
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Are these videos backed up by any sort of fact other than the fact cars and bikes do collide? To me they appear to promote unfair labeling of a particular type of driver which when not based on fact could be misleading and even counter productive. The truth is it could be any driver with or without a noteable distraction that could not see a rider resulting in a collision.
Chris Harrison Gloucestershire
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Statistics show that the two groups of riders who are featuring as the main Killed or Seriously Injured figures are those riding 50-125cc and 500cc & over. I doubt very much that these ‘cartoon’ clips go anyway near encouraging the associated age ranges to the above groups to firstly watch the clip or then take further training. I agree with Mark’s commment at the top that road safety professionals need to look at a more dynamic approach to encouraging riders to take post test training. Why do we never seek the help from the advertising gurus?
Glen, Sussex
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Post-test rider skills development, advanced riding or whatever you’d like to call it needs to be made a ‘sexy thing to do’. How you do it after various organisations have spent lots of money on marketing post-test training with varied results is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it’s time for a paradigm shift in the way we think about promoting advanced riding. Any expert ‘outside the box’ thinkers out there?
Mark – Wiltshire
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These videos are great, although you have to watch them a few times to see everything. Keep them coming!
Trevor – Manchester
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It always seem strange to me that once you have got somebody to view the video, you don’t then deliver a valuable message. I would think most people would feel a bit cheated by this as the video never delivers anything other than a message telling people to go somewhere else. It would be interesting to see what the conversion rate between video views, website visits and the number of training places booked.
Duncan MacKillop, Stratford on Avon
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28,000 people cannot be wrong! I love the opening shots, a view from above the clouds. A place far too many drivers find themselves when driving and sadly a place some riders find themselves after riding! A message for drivers and riders – Keep you head above the clouds.
Gareth, Surrey a keen motorcyclist
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