The THINK! team has relaunched its ‘Country Roads’ campaign which will run until the end of November.
This campaign is targeting drivers aged 25-34 years, using the message ‘Brake before the bend, not on it’. Evaluation shows that this age group did reduce their speed into bends following the 2015 campaign.
59% of all road fatalities occur on country roads, and in 2015, 10,307 people were killed or seriously injured on country roads in Great Britain. The number of people killed on country roads is 10 times higher than on motorways.
The biggest contributory factor to killed or seriously injured casualties on rural roads is loss of control, which is frequently associated with inappropriate speed at bends.
The THINK! Country Roads campaign aims to get drivers to anticipate the hazards that may lie ahead and reduce their speed into bends.
A survey carried out prior to the 2015 campaign showed that problems on country roads are most acute among young drivers.
A third confessed to braking too late before a bend and more than one in 10 admitted to ‘taking the racing line’ by crossing into the opposite side of the road. Young drivers are also the most likely to overtake on a bend without a clear road ahead.
The 2016 Country Roads campaign will include a re-run of the existing ‘If you could see’ creative in cinema, radio and online (featured).
For social, the campaign will feature new assets around the theme ‘You don’t know what’s around the corner’ which will be distributed mid-way through the campaign. The ‘helpful hazards’ content, which was first used last year, will also be used on social channels. These films show farm animals and agricultural equipment being used to warn drivers of the potential hazards on country roads.
From Wednesday 26 October the THINK! team will be sharing digital content, key facts and campaign information on the THINK! Facebook and Twitter pages. Road safety teams are being encouraged to share these posts or create their own, and link to the THINK! website (for Twitter posts) or share content from YouTube or Facebook.
A revised THINK! Country Roads toolkit is available for download from the members area on the Road Safety GB website. The toolkit includes background information, key campaign messages, advice for drivers using country roads, campaign materials and details of how road safety professionals can get involved in the campaign.
THINK! Will be using GPS devices to measure actual changes in drivers’ speed on country roads in order to research the campaign and the effect it has on driving behaviour.
I can make comments regarding motorcycling and the fact that some will use the racing line and therefore ride over the lines on both left and right handed bends.
Many motorcyclists learn from their own experiences and others and that includes the internet. Many do not and cannot afford training or see no useful benefit from undergoing it. Many will therefore look at videos on the internet and obtain some information through them. Many such videos are made by individuals that plainly just want to show off and therefore the videos contain material that is dangerous but appear exciting.
Most worrying are the videos that come from America and made by professionals who run Track Schools. They always teach the racing line on corners/bends of out/in/out cutting in from an outside line into the Apex and then out again. It is even in their motorcycle training manual published by by the Motorcycle Federation. I have looked at other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Europe and America is the only civilised nation that teaches one to ride the racing way on corners. That to my mind is being picked up by others over here and is emulated out on our roads.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons we seem to suffer as we do on corners and bends.
Bob Craven Lancs
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