In this opinion piece, Rebecca Morris, communications and partnerships lead at RoadPeace, explains how the industry needs to “invest far more time, and money, on getting inside road users’ heads” in order to really create “meaningful and effective” campaigns.
I don’t believe in having regrets, but if I had to identify one it would probably be the subjects I chose to study at college.
Having worked in road casualty reduction marketing and PR for the last two decades, I’ve become fascinated by the way road users think (or, perhaps more importantly, why they don’t think), and I really wish I’d studied psychology.
As a road safety marketer, the million-dollar question is and has always been: “How do we get people to take responsibility for their actions in order to change their behaviour on the roads?”
Other questions I’ve also regularly asked is: “Which messages work, and for which road user groups?” and “How do we get people to realise that they hold the key to reducing road harm?”
I’m still not sure we really know the answers to these questions. If we do, we haven’t yet developed that magic campaign that has actually worked.
I was delighted to see that one of my burning questions, “Why don’t people generally perceive the risks of road crashes?” was rather spectacularly answered in an article in the Guardian earlier this month. Headed ‘Motonormativity’: Britons more accepting of driving-related risk,’ the piece outlined the findings of a study by Ian Walker, a professor of environmental psychology at Swansea University.
The study of more than 2000 people found that the public appears to have an in-built acceptance of risks and harms from motor vehicles that they would not accept in other parts of life, with ‘potentially widespread repercussions for how policy decisions are made. ‘
The article states: ‘Such is the cultural ubiquity of these assumptions, described by the researchers as “motonormativity”, that politicians are less likely to try to tackle issues such as pollution from vehicles or poor driving.’
But just because many people currently believe that road crashes are an inevitable part of daily life, it doesn’t mean we should accept their beliefs. We need to do all we can to alter these points of view.
I’m also fascinated by optimism bias – the tendency of human beings to overestimate our likelihood of experiencing positive events and underestimate our likelihood of experiencing negative events.
I think this plays a huge part in our perceived sense of risk on the roads. We’re far more likely to think ‘it won’t happen to me’ than ‘gosh, I’d better take care on the roads today in case I’m involved in a crash.’
We need to invest far more time, and money, on getting inside road users’ heads on a national level. We really need to get to grips with how road users think and feel, to determine which messages work and which don’t.
Sadly, budgets are tight and spending money on research of this type is pretty costly. But if we don’t know the answers to these vital questions, how can we really create meaningful and effective communications campaigns? If we aren’t basing our messaging on facts, then aren’t we potentially wasting every penny we spend on marketing?
The use of qualitative and quantitative research in the creation of road safety marketing campaigns is nothing new. Back in 2005, while working as the Marketing and Publicity Officer at Derbyshire Safety Camera Partnership, I teamed up with around eight other safety camera partnerships in the Midlands to conduct this type of in-depth research.
Collectively, we spent tens of thousands of pounds on pre-campaign and post-campaign research. We engaged with a market research agency to carry out thousands of interviews with our target audiences in town centres across the Midlands.
We developed a number of campaigns using this method of research and evaluation, and in 2006 we received a Prince Michael International Road Safety Award. We felt like we were really getting somewhere.
But sadly, those days of being able to conduct this vital research for communications were fairly short-lived. Soon after, safety camera partnerships became road safety partnerships and the funding arrangements changed. Many road safety communications managers were made redundant and marketing budgets were slashed or removed all together.
Communications was clearly seen as a ‘nice to have’ and not the essential part of the road casualty reduction process that it is. In order to save money, funding was removed from this vitally important area of work. Who knows where we’d be now if we’d been able to continue in this way?
What we do know is, in the last 30 years, since RoadPeace was formed:
- more than 81,000 people have been killed in collisions on Britain’s roads.
- 1,245,833 people have been seriously injured and
- Six million people have received a minor injury as a result of a road traffic collision
But if that’s not enough evidence to prove that we MUST no longer accept road deaths and injuries as an inevitable part of UK life, then perhaps let’s look at the financial costs (which I hate to do, because the human cost will always be far greater). Every single fatal collision costs society in the region of a staggering £2.3m.
If we invested more time and money into developing widespread, national communications campaigns, working with research agencies and transport psychologists, then we may just save some more lives as well as an extortionate amount of money.
So, if there are any businesses out there who truly want to support the reduction of road harm by helping to fund a road user research project or a subsequent campaign, RoadPeace and its stakeholders would be more than happy to take this forward.
We live in hope that one day RoadPeace won’t need to exist anymore. If we achieve Vision Zero, as so many of us are determined to do, then there will be no need for the charity or the support that it provides to road victims. There won’t be any victims. I sincerely hope I live to see this day.
Definitely worth reading through this report:
Guide for Road Safety Interventions: Evidence of What Works and What Does Not Work
https://www.roadsafetyfacility.org/publications/guide-road-safety-interventions-evidence-what-works-and-what-does-not-work
It looks at all of the existing evidence on what is effective in reducing crashes and education isn’t on the list. A “Safe System” approach accepts that people make mistakes so perhaps we start by letting go of that little issue and then concentrating on what we can do to protect people when they do make mistakes!
Simon Daniels, Devon
+3
Hi Rebecca, I totally agree that we do need to look at what messages influence different road users. In the past national TV campaigns have worked, but with the number of channels now it would be very difficult to reach as many people.
There is a lot of academia around behaviour change, so may be some more in depth work into what campaigns resonate and change behaviour and what doesn’t! I think a campaign around role models covering all ages groups i.e. children not wearing seat belts, young drivers and parents speeding & using phones. Older drivers and eyesight.. ‘Who is your role model?’ it would be a great campaign to run through schools & colleges.
ROBINSON, Laressa
0
There are some good points made in this article which I agree with, but why only focus on motorists? We also need to get inside the heads of the cyclists and e-scooters riders who terrorise and harm pedestrians daily as they ride all over our pavements, ignore traffic lights, fail to have bike lights, and verbally abuse and threaten us with physical violence when we object.
As a disabled pensioner I would very much like to understand the mind-set of the cyclist who threatened to wrap my crutches around my neck because I told her cycling on the pavement is illegal; and the cyclist who threatened to smash my head in; and the cyclist who threatened to get his wife to beat me up; and the numerous cyclists who have called me an **** slut, and an old bag and numerous other names – all because I objected to them cycling on the pavement. I would also like to understand the psychology of why, when cycle lanes are provided, cyclists ignore them and cycle on the pavement next to them!
“Harm and injury” cannot just be calculated in terms of physical casualties. Countless numbers of us, elderly and disabled pedestrians, repeatedly suffer mental injury & trauma from the above behavior and from numerous near misses that rob us of our confidence and leave us afraid to go out. Perhaps most of all I would like to understand the psychology of the planners, and policy and decision-makers who ignore our plight and our pleas.
Christina Young, Liverpool
+5
Excellent piece, Rebecca. This has been a thing of mine for many years. It’s no good asking the ‘perps’ as they will be defensive of their actions.
Further driver training after passing the test will help, but I really don’t believe that learner drivers develop roadcraft if they are being taught by family members who may not have a clue what that even means.
Lynda Hill, Lewes
0
I don’t disagree with Elaine’s comment on maximum speeds and so-called performance figures attracting the wrong sort of driver, but as for experts determining safe speeds and safe ways to drive…fine, but the problem still remains i.e. how do we get the drivers and riders to adopt these safe practices? Hasn’t just about everything been tried?
Maybe cars and bikes should be far more restricted, so that there is simply no inducement to try and overtake everything on the road, or be the first away from the lights, or showing off a car’s ‘performance’ etc. Maybe prospective purchasers of such vehicles should be psycho-analysed first!
Finally the retired policeman Nigel was talking to may have overlooked the fact that police vehicles do actually collide with other road users, sometimes with tragic results, so they are definitely not infallible – at any speed – not just 150mph! At this speed, it’s more luck than skill that counts, as the laws of physics I believe also apply to police and other emergency vehicles going too fast to be absolutely risk and collision-free.
Hugh Jones, Wirral, Cheshire
+1
Can I just say! Car and motorcycle manufacturers build their vehicles to speeds of up to and beyond – 200 mph. So why do you people think that drivers and riders who are enticed to buy these cars/motorcycles would want to drive/ride at low speed??
You’re all looking the wrong way. Until the industry decides to work with road crash investigators/highway builders/trainers to determine what is effectively a safe speed and a safe way to drive/ride, you’re wasting everybody’s times.
This whole vision zero/safe systems is pie in the sky thinking. Ultimately it’s all about the money – car/motorcycle industry etc. You can impose all the laws and regulations that you want, but if vehicles are able to travel at high speed – what’s the point?
Elaine Hardy PhD, Belfast and Cabanas de Tavira
+2
> You want to know about getting into the minds of the general (driving) public and be safe on the roads? Ask those people. They have proof of provenance and, therefore, the credentials
As opposed to asking members of the public that also have those skills, a segment of society that are often vilified by contributors to this site?
In all seriousness, it’s all about finding a way to prevent mistakes from happening. Are those mistakes caused by impatience, by ineffective road signage or layout, by “do-gooders” who decided that an over-exaggerated reduction in speed limit is required – who knows, every situation is different.
Now, to do something about that…
David Weston, Newcastle upon Tyne
--1
I have always thought that a significant study of “what type of person is more likely to be crash involved” would shed more light on this. Even concentrating on drivers “prosecuted” in such crashes. Some limited info could be sourced from STATS 19 – but anonymity may be and issue. Location the “at fault” driver lives (potentially low socio-economic area…or high ?), whether they had insurance, do they have previous convictions (motoring or other), number of car insurance claims, their profession etc etc. That may provide a smaller number of the population to target.
John Mather
0
I asked a former Police Advanced Course Instructor how long he had done that job and he said, 20 years. i asked him how many mjles he thought he had done in that work over that time, he said around 1 million. I asked him what speeds the courses reached, he said around 150 miles per hour. And i said, ‘No scratches in all that time?’. He said, ‘Correct’. ‘So’, I said, ’20 years, 1 million miles, up to 150 mph and no scratches, how come 1560 odd people died on UK roads last year?’ And he said, ‘Exactly’. You want to know about getting into the minds of the general (driving) public and be safe on the roads? Ask those people. They have proof of provenance and, therefore, the credentials.
Nigel ALBRIGHT
--2
Great article and very interesting. Thanks
Rebecca James, Bradford
+3
Thanks Rebecca for all you’ve done and are continuing to do. I have often said that RoadPeace is a club that doesn’t want any new members but, sadly, since I became involved with RoadPeace nearly twenty-two years ago, they haven’t tailed off. However, thanks to RoadPeace as a whole and here in the Northwest to our amazing friend, Pauline Fielding, much has been done to help reduce the casualty numbers and support those unfortunately bereaved or seriously injured on our roads. We have to keep up the good work and I trust your message will bring much needed publicity to the efforts of RoadPeace and further funding for our charity to continue it to an even greater degree and get ever closer to that zero.
David Midmer, Wirral
+3