International road safety charity, Brake, has released a new guidance report to help practitioners and campaigners develop practical approaches to education interventions on road safety.
The Inspire, Inform, Engage report, created together with Suzuki New Zealand, looks at creating education interventions related to safe, sustainable, healthy and fair transport, either in organisational settings such as companies and schools, or in wider communications campaigns.
The report looks at current research and evidence from academics in the fields of transport psychology and health education and helps practitioners set realistic outcome goals.
It discusses the legitimacy of education and communication as a means to raise awareness of, and inspire action for, road safety issues, and also explains recent evidence that long-term attitudinal and behavioural change is difficult to achieve through single interventions.
Brake chief executive Mary Williams said, “Traditional road safety education and communication has focused on attitudinal and behavioural change, which current research shows is difficult to achieve quickly or through one initiative – it often requires a combination of things including enforcement and repetition of messaging over long periods of time.
“This doesn’t mean that road safety and sustainable travel education should be abandoned though; it has a key role to play in informing people about the issues, deepening their knowledge and inspiring action to help save lives, including for example campaigning in communities for measures that slow down traffic.”
The report comes ahead of the United Nations Global Road Safety Week on May 8-14, which supports interventions to reduce traffic speed.