"The Truck Caravan" - national truck driving awareness campaign

Road safety - Accident statistics - Truck drivers' limited visibility at the right front tire of the truck, Young people's limited capabilities to manage large intersections and heavy traffic. At ITD, road safety is absolutely central to our work, as we as an association have a responsibility to actively contribute to reducing the number of accidents on the roads and potentially saving lives. In 2021, we are running three nation-wide road safety campaigns to target a broad audience. Our main target groups are pupils, parents, teachers and the transport industry itself but we also address the outside world through media coverage in Danish newspapers and tv and radio channels (not by paid advertisements, but the media cover the campaigns because of the vital piece of news. At the beginning of this year, it was difficult to visit schools due to the corona situation, so we developed a new, innovative campaign called "Stay away from the right front tire of the truck", which ran from the end of January to the end of April 2021. The campaign was very visible with 20 (the budget decided the numbers of trucks) pink trucks driving around with the important message on the side of the truck with very good support from our member companies. The choice of the colour pink made a huge difference in order to get the message through (to the population and internal to the industry) and was actually very well-received in an industry known to be a bit conservative. Read more: https://itd.dk/nyheder/itd-nyt/2021/pink-trailere-saetter-trafiksikkerhed-paa-agendaen/ In August, we ran our campaign "Use your head in traffic" (www.hmit.nu) targeted at 8th grade students and in October we will run our campaign called "The truck caravan" targeted at 1st and 2th grade students. During the corona pandemic in 2020 and 2021, The truck caravan has sent 60,000 green reflective vests and teaching materials to all 2th grade students in Denmark. "Use your head in traffic" was developed in 2019 and "The truck caravan" was developled in 2013. Both campaigns have been improved during the years to develop the concept since we believe in continuity and repetition. Participants: 400 young people participate in "Use your head in traffic". each year. 3,000 children participate in The truck caravan each year (however, during corona the number of participants has been fewer). All three campaigns involve our communication and marketing department, and campaign project manager Malene Vitus is also the media/press spokesperson. All three campaigns involve and rely on a number of our member companies. They make their trucks available for the campaigns in order for us to teach the pupils, when they get inside the truck and experience the size of the truck and the critical zones, when it comes to the driver's view. We use self-developed education material for the pupils and collaborate with the Danish council for traffic safety, the police and other business partners to create as much impact as possible. We also collaborate with actors, who act as moderators, when we visit schools. This goes to get the important messages through. That can be via music, dance or inspiring ways to present accident statistics. We also invite road accident victims in a wheelchair to tell their own stories to show how your life can change dramatically even if you are only off guard for a moment. A visit from "The Truck Caravan" or "Use your head in traffic" is free of charge. Let's use "The truck caravan" as an example. Here, the school children already know the main character, the story and the songs in advance, as all the material is available online to all children/parents/teachers at the main character Magda's 'private' website (songs, books, colouring book, maths paper etc.) The main character, Magda, who is a female truck driver (played by an actress) introduces the children to trucks and safety. She talks about why trucks drive on the roads and how they take up a lot of space, what they are transporting (everything from swimming pools and schoolbags, to cucumbers and computers). The show ends with two songs, the message of which is 'Stay behind the truck' and celebrating that nobody was harmed in traffic. The lyrics are based on Danish humour and are specially-written for the target audience. After the show, once the children have finished dancing and discussed road safety with the main character, they are all given green reflective vests with a cool logo particularly designed to the campaign to encourage them to use them after the show. The trucks await in the schoolyard. Each child is able to climb the steps to the truck driver's seat and see the view from the cabin. On the front right side, there is a red circle which indicates the critical zone that the show has taught the children to stay out of. In the schoolyard, we will also be checking the children's bicycles and talking about vulnerable road users. There are exercises aimed at the target groups: other- activities are "Knowledge of road signs", "Build your own LEGO truck and play/drive/use the knowledge you have gained" and "Does a helmet work?" (illustrated with eggs) and there will be a break, during which they can 'climb' the trucks and bring their bicycles inside the trailers. There is a complete "plug 'n' play" campaign guide for teachers, allowing them to implement the campaign into class teaching. The guide contains activities for the various school subjects (Danish, art, maths etc.) Each class that is visited by the Truck Caravan will be given a set of books, posters and teaching guide, free of charge.