ANWB Streetwise | De Verkeersgame (traffic game)

As ANWB, we aim for zero road casualties in 2050. In order to achieve this ambitious goal it is of vital importance that kids start learning about road safety from an early age. The earlier they learn how to ride a bike and get safely from point A to point B the more responsible traffic participants they’ll become in the future. We already offer an all-round educational road safety program for elementary schools throughout the Netherlands with a annual reach around 150.000 students per year. However, both teachers and parents agree that traffic education is primarily the responsibility of parents themselves and should not only happen at school. We challenged ourselves to come up with a solution that encourages kids to learn about road safety at home and offers parents tools to talk about traffic behaviour and practise concrete traffic related situations with their children.

Project activities

If you work together with external partners, list the most important partners and briefly describe their role.

1. Development concept and game: &Samhoud creative tech / &Ranj During the development of ANWB Streetwise | De verkeersgame (traffic game) we worked closely together with both parents and kids in order to make it engaging, but also user friendly. Apart from co-developing with the target group, we also cooperated with a traffic psychologist, education expert and behavioural experts to strengthen the educational value of the game, while building on behavioural models like CMAO that provide the basis for sustainable behavioural change. NB. In this model, Cognition (C) is combined with intrinsic motivation (M), skill building (Ability) and opportunity(O) for kids to learn in a way that is inviting and keeps driving positive behaviour. 2. Campaign We worked closely with several partners to create a 360 campaign. Fitzroy created the big idea "rules of the street", Yune did the production, Fitzgerald and Wavemaker were responsible for PR, influencers & native content.

Please describe the project activities you carried/are carrying out and the time period over which these were implemented.

The project started with rethinking our societal road safety proposition and the creation of a new long term strategy in which we came up with an ecosystem of traffic activities and products for kids between 4 and 12 in order to increase their traffic knowledge and skills,motivating safe traffic behaviour. We learned that for kids, traffic education is often something that they associate with mandatory learning rather than a fun experience. For parents, traffic education is something they want to feel responsible for, but at the same time they indicate to often lack knowledge, confidence and a benchmark about what their kids should know at what age. Also, traffic education is something that usually happens on the go while being on the road. With ANWB Streetwise | De verkeersgame (traffic game), we created an innovative, playful and fun experience with high educational value. At the same time, the concept supports parents in how they can contribute to the development of the traffic knowledge and behaviour of their children by offering relevant information, tips and actual traffic missions they can take on together with their children. We combined the power of storytelling, appealing characters and game mechanics with the latest up-to-date learning goals and created an app that is both fun and truly educational. ANWB Streetwise | De verkeersgame (traffic game) is a free to play casual serious game. In the app, the Streetwise world is overrun by road raging ‘Streetwacko’s’ who, with their bad traffic behaviour, are causing chaos and turmoil in the streets. Together with our hero character Robin, kids challenge each wacko and battle them with their traffic knowledge to turn them back into the good citizens they once were. By completing a variety of traffic missions, each with its own traffic theme, kids have to tackle all 6 Wacko boss-levels to make the streets of Streetwise safe again. Each level also contains a special parent-kid mission that is executed in real life. Next to that, kids can go wacko hunting in special bonus missions that are played in augmented reality. During the development of ANWB Streetwise | De verkeersgame (traffic game) we worked closely together with both parents and kids in order to make it engaging, but also user friendly. Apart from co-developing with the target group, we also cooperated with a traffic psychologist, education expert and behavioural experts to strengthen the educational value of the game, while building on behavioural models like CMAO that provide the basis for sustainable behavioural change. NB. In this model, Cognition (C) is combined with intrinsic motivation (M), skill building (Ability) and opportunity(O) for kids to learn in a way that is inviting and keeps driving positive behaviour. Period: development 2021 (jan-dec) - 2022 (feb). Campaign towards kids and parents started in March 2022.

List the actions you carried/are carrying out

Date

Friday, 3 June, 2022

Evaluation

What has been the effect of the activities?

In the first two months after launch, the app reached an app rating of 4+ stars, entering the top 10 in the app store category Trivia an Dutch website Nu.nl made us ‘app of the week’. In total, kids answered over a million questions with an in-app time of 13+ minutes and average completion rate of 82%, showing high engagement.

Please briefly explain why your initiative is a good example of improving road safety.

Through playing the game, we discovered that 88% of the players were able to improve themselves in passing questions that they failed the first time - indicating a high learning curve leading to knowledge increase. The app was received very positively by both parents, kids and teachers who indicated the app would be a perfect follow-up at home, engaging kids and parents in traffic education. We also see that parents engage well via the special parent-kid mission that is executed in real traffic.

How have you shared information about your project and its results?

The campaign now runs for almost 3 months. Via our PR launch en campaign we reached already a big audience on national level, but this is the first award we subscribe for.