We have written extensively about the mindless advertising that often may be well intentioned but probably instead does transit, biking, and walking no favors.
The Copenhagenize blog goes deep into the story behind why transit advertising so often makes people feel bad or even scared when it comes to making a decision to switch from driving alone.
The bottom line is that “the traffic-safety crowd are in a world unto themselves often allied with insurance companies who clearly take comfort scaring the population at large through constructed fear.”
We thought it appropriate to do a little communication meta-analysis of their techniques of the traffic safety subculture.
Along with the legal system, traffic safety organisations are integral players in shaping how we view road users all around the world. The first thing we noticed was how all these organisations seem to ignore one of the key messages required to truly make roads safer.
Lower the number of motor vehicles on the road, and slow them down. We call it Ignoring the Bull here at Copenhagenize Design Company.
Anyone who works in traffic planning or advocacy will find the lack of focus on the obvious to be rather bizarre. As it is now, the campaign language and programs promoted by the traffic safety organizations unabashedly victimize the individual (primarily pedestrians and cyclists) rather than speak out about the dangers of motorized vehicles. They also tend to ignore the one most obvious solution to lower road fatalities – a drastic reduction in the number of motorized vehicles on the road.
Even a nine-year-old can figure it out that this is the only way to go.
However, the traffic safety organizations have settled upon strategies that are as uniform as they are blatant in their support of the status quo. These trends are not limited to countries who have high numbers of road fatalities, but in fact the same rhetoric and messages can be seen globally.
Just take a look the recent ETSC Road Safety Performance Index (PIN) Conference held in Brussels in June 2017. The speaker list only represented the views of the car industry and road safety organizations which support it. Talk about an echo chamber.
Speakers from other disciplines and with different points of view on methods of change, such as experts in user behavior, strategies about behavior change, and advocates of increasing alternative transport modes were absent as they always are. A diverse selection of opinions would include people who are not interested in maintaining the car-centric status quo in our cities.
What this communication subculture doesn’t talk about is rather telling. Basically anything that would brand cars as the problem – or reducing the number of cars.
The authors list a fairly extensive group of cities and places that have awful victim-blaming and shaming ads, and conclude:
As it is now, if these traffic-safety organizations are only speaking to themselves, backslapping each other at closed conferences, and arrogantly exaggerating the effect of their tired, last-century campaign strategies – as well as being so completely disconnected from the rest of us working to improve city life around the world – do we have to listen to them or give them any credibility?
Probably not. We can wonder, however, why they continue to receive funding to broadcast flawed messages without any positive results and zero accountability.
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