Communication, Public Discourse, and Road Safety Campaigns

Persuading People to Be Safer

Nurit Guttman

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781136154645
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi sulla comunicazione

This book discusses the use of communication campaigns to promote road safety, arguing that they need to elicit public discourse on issues pertaining to culture, equity, gender, workplace norms, environmental issues, and social solidarity. Increasingly, new media channels and formats are employed in the dissemination process, making road safety-related messages ubiquitous, and often controversial. Policy makers, educators, researchers, and the public continue to debate the utility and morality of some of the influence tactics employed in these messages, such as the use of graphic images of injury or death, stigmatization (or "blame and shame"), and the use of "black humor." Guttman argues that influencing road safety requires making changes in normative and cultural conceptions of broader issues in society, yet the typical discourse on road safety tends to focus on individual attitudes and practices. The book highlights the importance of social and behavioral theory in communication campaigns on road safety, and critiques the tendency to focus on individual cognition, affect, and risk conceptions rather than on normative, structural, and cultural factors. The volume positions the discourse on road safety as a social issue, and treats road safety behavior as a social activity that directly relates to other public issues, social values, and social policy, while discussing potential uses of social media and participatory approaches. The discussion turns to the role of road safety communication campaigns as part of a democratic process of eliciting public discourse, including how contemporary society could address broader issues of risk and safety.

1 The Social Context of Road Safety Communication Campaigns

DOI: 10.4324/9780203078419-2

Road safety is high on the national and global agenda and pertains directly to public health, social justice, environmental and city planning issues. The importance of road safety has become a prominent personal, national and global concern because road use, and by implication road safety, increasingly play an important part in people’s everyday lives. This was noted as early as in a 1924 article by George Graham, Chairman of the U.S. Traffic Planning and Safety Committee of the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce and vice president of Chandler Motor Car Company. He proposed, and present-day authors agree with him, that because of the emerging role of the automobile as a dominant mode of transportation, road safety “exerts its influence on everything: education, living costs, comfort, pleasure and family ties” (Graham, 1924; p. 174). He also proposed using media campaigns to reach the public in order to “arouse an interest” in road safety (p. 179). Automobiles continue to play an important role in contemporary lives and in the human experience, and media communication campaigns, the topic of this book, have indeed become since an important tool to promote road safety. As a background for road safety communication campaigns, this chapter presents a brief overview of psychological, social and cultural factors that influence road safety, including people’s conceptions of risk; road safety and gender; and environmental, social equity and economic concerns.

Road Safety as a Health, Environmental, and Social Equity Issue

Road safety has been proclaimed officially by the United Nations and the World Health Organization as one of the world’s most pressing international health and development concerns, and a leading cause of death among young people. Many of those who sustain traffic injuries later suffer from stress, mental and long-term serious health problems (World Health Organization, 2009). International organizations, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations, the World Bank and the European Commission have proclaimed road issues must be given a priority. Road traffic deaths and injuries impose a substantial economic burden on nations worldwide. The World Bank estimates road crashes cost approximately one to three percent of a country’s annual Gross National Product (Racioppi et al., 2004; World Bank, 2010). To draw attention to the fact that road safety is a growing problem, the World Health Organization devoted its 2004 annual World Health Day to road safety. Five years later, a Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020 was officially proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in the First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety (World Health Organization, 2013).

The language used by governments and road safety organization officials is often the language of combat: They aim to ‘fight’ against vehicle crashes. Road casualties are also described as an ‘epidemic’, drawing on medical terminology that aims to underscore the gravity and magnitude of the human toll associated with road use. Individuals also perceive road safety as an important issue that needs to be dealt with by society. For example, in a survey of nineteen (mostly European) countries, in most, road crashes were assessed as the highest concern compared to unemployment, crime, healthcare and pollution (Antov et al., 2012). A U.S. survey found aggressive driving was perceived by most respondents as a serious threat to their own safety (Governors Highway Safety Association, 2012). For many, road crashes are personally familiar: In a 2011 U.S. survey, nearly half of all respondents reported they experienced a serious crash personally or knew someone close who did (AAA Foundation, 2012).

Road safety affects individuals, communities and people of all ages, but in particular children, youth, and young adults. According to the World Health Organization’s 2013 report, about 1.24 million people die annually and between 20 and 50 million sustain non-fatal injuries, among them at least 10 million children (World Health Organization, 2013). These statistics describe the startling human toll of motor vehicle use. They also highlight the vast changes that occurred since the first publicized UK gasoline-powered motor vehicle fatality that took place at Crystal Palace London in 1896. Bridget Driscoll, a 44-year-old pedestrian, who was visiting London, was killed by a driver in a demonstration vehicle. Its driver began to drive only three weeks earlier. At the time, a fatality caused by a motor vehicle was an unusual incident (McFarlane, 2010). Tragically, fatalities and serious injuries from motor vehicle crashes have become worldwide a daily occurrence. More so, they are nearly taken for granted. To avoid the presumption that road use by motor vehicles inevitably needs to be associated with fatal crashes, road safety proponents advocate avoiding the term ‘accident’ because it implies crashes are inevitable, unpredictable, and cannot be managed or avoided. They prefer the use of ‘crash’ to emphasize that road safety is amenable to rational analysis and remedial action (Peden et al., 2004).

Road traffic injuries have been declared a social equity issue as well, because they disproportionately affect vulnerable groups of road users, among them children and economically disadvantaged populations. The vast and growing infrastructure of roads and the use of automobiles as a means to reach places of work, commerce, and leisure have played a critical role in the development of economies and social relations. Analysts explain that modern logistics and market globalization have increased the distance and number of trips traveled by heavy vehicles. Societies and individuals have been paying the price for these developments, with costs such as risks to the physical environment (e.g., encroachment on nature and open spaces), hazards to physical health by increasing air pollution, damage to social relations (e.g., a longer commute to the workplace), and the threat of injury and death and the physical and emotional toll these entail. This has resulted in increased traffic volume, which in turn causes increased risks to other road users compared to other transportation modes such as rail, sea or inland water ways. Scholars note people’s increased desire to own a personal automotive vehicle is part of the trend of privatization of transportation (Racioppi et al., 2004).

From a public health perspective, the shift towards using private cars has a detrimental impact on people’s health. People’s growing dependence on automotive transportation over walking and cycling, even for short distances, has contributed to health problems related to limited physical activity. Further, the built environment, in particular in lower-income urban areas, is often less conducive or even unsafe for pedestrian use. This can restrict opportunities of both adults and children to lead a more physically active lifestyle through walking, cycling and playing outdoors. Thus, road safety infrastructure policies to develop safer cycling and walking paths can contribute to public health efforts to encourage physical activity. Also, motor vehicle use contributes to air pollution. Thus, initiatives to decrease their use and speed can contribute to environmental efforts to reduce fuel consumption and pollution (May, Tranter, & Warn, 2008).

Economic and political factors influence the implementation of a safer physical road infrastructure. This is largely dependent on nations’ resources and local authorities. Road crash data indicate people in low-income areas are more likely to be involved in road traffic crashes. This could be a result of inadequate consideration in urban planning decisions regarding transportation and road safety in these areas. Consequently, major roads might be developed with little consideration for the needs of the communities they pass through. Further, road transport systems and urban development often do not accommodate more vulnerable road users such as children, cyclists, or motorbike riders, or ecological considerations. Such roads are associated with noise and air pollution that affect people’s quality of life and physical health. In higher income areas the needs of non-motorized road users tend to be given more consideration: separate lanes are allocated for bicycles; safer paths for pedestrians and safer recreational areas for children and youth are allocated. Lower income populations are also more likely to use older cars with fewer safety features (Peden et al., 2004) or to use vehicles in an unsafe manner. One example is from Pakistan, an overloaded truck with riders sitting on the back, as shown in Illustration 1.

Illustration 1 Overloaded truck with riders sitting on the back in Pakistan. Photograph by Ahsan Ul Haq Kayani.

Strategies to Address Road Safety

Safer system approaches: People’s practices clearly play an important role in road safety, but road crashes are not caused by a single factor: Several processes that occur simultaneously and sequentially might eventually lead to a crash. Traditional approaches for describing causal elements of road crashes address the driver, the infrastructure, and the vehicle as the main actors, with some interactions among them. This led to the conception of the “3 E” approach for managing road safety, namely: Engineering (i.e., infrastructure, vehicle features, protective gear), Enforcement (laws and regulations), and Education (training and communication initiatives). In the past, the driver or the “human factor” was typically considered to be the main factor (Tay, 2005). Critics argue that a more holistic, integrated, and system-oriented approach is needed to achieve road safety. They maintain that road use is dangerous because road traffic system design is not based on optimal safety and therefore human behavior becomes a major factor. Instead, they propose the ‘Safe System’ or ‘Sustainable Safety’ approaches that aim to create an infrastructure that prevents outcomes of crashes that result in serious injury or death. It promotes the ethos of ‘shared responsibility’, and has been adopted by several countries (OECD International Transport Forum, 2008). This approach is further elaborated on in the section on tolerance and intolerance of traffic fatalities. Because road infrastructure design and maintenance depend on the economic wealth and policies of national and local governments, differences can be found across communities and nations. This has led to gaps in the number of deaths and injuries between different countries (World Health Organization, 2013).

Safety technologies and gear: Road safety can be enhanced by devices that affect the mechanical aspects of vehicles. Critics note that certain important safety features are highly influenced by government regulations and enforcement, thus vehicle safety is also dependent on economic wealth. Although automobiles are increasingly designed to be safer, the history of car safety features appears to be marred with certain objections from the automotive industry. Critics note that because of corporate and political considerations there has been a gap between the potential of technologically safer cars and those marketed (Roberts, Wentz, & Edwards, 2006). Currently, there is a wide range of emerging technologies that can be installed in vehicles to increase driving safety. These technologies can help raise awareness of risk-related situations, compensate for drivers’ cognitive and driving performance limitations, alert driver-related risk conditions (e.g., drowsiness detection systems), provide information to the driver (e.g., navigation systems, speed alerts), and even interfere with actual driving (e.g., emergency braking, intelligent speed adaptation). One criticism is that these technologies tend to focus on the drivers’ and passengers’ safety and to a lesser extent on protecting pedestrians (Moeckli & Lee, 2007). Vehicle technologies include automated vehicles that do not necessitate human drivers. Whereas these technologies appear to be ‘futuristic’, such technologies were developed as early as the 1930s and it is predicted their use will become more widespread and reduce overall traffic casualties. Certain safety technologies such as seatbelts, infant safety seats and safety helmets, which typically depend on behavior by vehicle occupants, are currently mandated by law, depending on the country or state.

Legislation and its enforcement: Road use legislation and its enforcement are considered to be a critical road safety promotion strategy (Governors Highway Safety Association, 2012). Various restrictions are intended to get road users to adopt road safety practices and to avoid risks even when they are not inclined to do so. Public support for road safety laws is varied: Some are accepted as necessary and commonsense but others are viewed as unreasonable or controversial. For example, the requirement to use seatbelts or safety helmets has been objected to by individuals and organizations that claim they restrict their personal freedom or comfort. Some also object to speed limits and the issue of automated speed enforcement is a subject of ongoing public debate. Researchers observed that whereas British local newspaper coverage tended to support automated camera initiatives, the national media was more critical and referred to them as unfairly penalizing motorists who might not be causing harm (Poulter & McKenna, 2007). Cross nation survey findings show support levels differ for various types of enforcement measures and some show a decreased support for speed detection measures (Antov et al., 2012). Enforcement proponents propose communication campaigns could help enlist public support for important road safety restrictions and regulations (McKenna, 2007). However, enforcement communication campaigns appear to mainly emphasize its presence and severity rather than its legitimacy (elaborated on in Chapter 5). Other regulations such as restricting driving after drinking alcoholic beverages tend to receive stronger support across nations. Methods to monitor alcohol consumptions vary, and different countries use different indicators; some of these are contested. The legal limit of alcohol level is also a contested issue in some countries. For example, randomly checking all drivers is seen by some as an infringement of privacy, although surveys show public support for this measure has increased (Harris & Peter Harris Research Group, 2004). Rules limiting cell phone use while driving, in particular using the text messaging feature, also appear to be widely supported (though these are not necessarily adhered to). Some countries place restrictions on novice drivers that might include the number of passengers they may ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Social Context of Road Safety Communication Campaigns
• 2 News, Entertainment Media, and Early Road Safety Communication Campaigns: From Silent Movie Car Chases to ‘Crash Dummies’
• 3 Emphasis on the Cognitive: Appealing to Reason and Using Science, Logic, and Analogies to Persuade People
• 4 Hard-hitting Images of Injury, Death, and the Grief of Bereavement
• 5 Enlisting the Power of Deterrence: The Threat of Legal Enforcement and Penalties
• 6 Reluctant Heroes and Guardian Angels: Responsibility, Accountability, and Social Norms in Road Safety Campaigns
• 7 Making It Easier to Promote and Adopt Road Safety Practices: Social Marketing Strategies and Ambient and Digital Venues
• 8 Beyond Scaring and Admonishing: Propositions and Challenges for Theoretically-Grounded and Culture-Centered Road Safety Communication Campaigns
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index