Good practices

According to statistics, road accidents are the leading cause of death for young people, especially in the 18-24 age group. This is a good reason to raise awareness and to leverage the young population.
Many young people and young adults represent an interesting target for awareness campaigns. Not only can they help spreading awareness in society right now, but they are also highly exposed to road risks. Moreover, when properly addressed, younger people are open to learn and to change behaviour.
Motorways, Italian Police and City Authorities decided to reach out to young people by creating a project aimed at road safety culture.
The main goal is to widespread safety culture directly to students and young adults. It is also the opportunity to mobilize a huge number of national, regional and local stakeholders.
Impact and scale: The core of the initiative is made out of 40 events in 6 regions and 20 towns. Organizers expect to reach 10.000 to 20.000 people, ideally 15.000. It’s not just an easy tour of lectures in schools. Strategies for medium/long term engagement are put into practice. A concrete assessment of results is being made.

The danger for children in traffic increases significantly in darkness or poor visibility. Children are often overlooked in such conditions because their small size and usually dark clothing make them difficult for drivers to see. Without adequate lighting or reflective materials, they are especially at risk, as they are noticed much later than adults. Additionally, children often react impulsively and unpredictably in traffic, which increases the risk of accidents.
It is particularly critical that children have difficulty judging distances and the speed of vehicles. This ability is further impaired in the dark. Drivers also have limited visibility in the dark and need more time to react to unexpected obstacles. Glare from street lighting, oncoming vehicles, or bad weather exacerbates the situation.
Another problem is that children often do not realize that they are harder to see in poor lighting conditions. They rely on drivers always seeing and stopping for them. This misjudgment can be dangerous. Therefore, it is important that children learn early on how to improve their visibility in traffic.

Young people are very sensitive to a wide range of environmental stimuli. For this reason, they also find it difficult to concentrate exclusively on the driving task. This is reflected, among other things, in increased distraction by smartphones and other secondary activities while driving.
Around a third of all accidents in Austria are caused by distraction. Distraction is also the number one cause of accidents among young road users aged 15 to 19.
For this reason, the Austrian Road Safety Board (KFV) developed a workshop with a focus on grades 9 to 13, which deals with distraction in road traffic in two teaching units. The workshop content focuses on the attitude and knowledge level of young drivers and passengers.
The workshop aims to raise awareness that distraction while driving can increase the accident risk. Furthermore, participants should gain appropriate prevention strategies.

We are tasking university marketing students to reimagine how road safety is marketed across the country. This is a very difficult task as we have found that a lot of the current marketing campaigns simply do not resonate with the target audience of 18 to 25 year olds. What this project has done is get them to focus on what is currently out there and to come up with new ways to connect with the audience in an effective marketing campaign.

Motorcycle crashes are different. They follow different patterns to any other mode. They have different reasons, and they are by far more difficult to address. Motorcycle riders are considered vulnerable road users, and even those who wear good protective clothing are much more exposed to risk than road users in a protective cage or moving at lower speeds. Fatalities among motorcycle users are decreasing, but at a slower rate and with a lag when compared to car drivers. Hence, their share within total traffic fatalities has increased in recent years (currently at 16% in Europe).

Motorcycles are an important solution to urban congestion, they are environmentally friendly compared to cars carrying just one person, and they are an important economic factor for tourism.

Measures in the area of education are important and can be effective but would take decades to develop their full potential. Technological measures such as ABS are very effective but are slow to penetrate the market. It is particularly difficult to convince riders to use protective equipment. In contrast, infrastructural measures offer an opportunity for immediate impact.