A road safety pilot project coordinated by the European Union’s TEN-T Programme and supported by EASST was completed with great success in Odessa, Ukraine.
Using primarily social websites (http://vkontakte.ru/ ) the project managed to cut speeding related deaths and offences by 30% in one month, and double seat belt wearing from 20 to 40% in two months. On 15 November a press conference on the results of the pilot project was held in Odessa and an event in School no 2 in was organized where the senior children put on a performance for the younger ones.
In line with the agreed plan, the campaign started in June 2011 was on the issue of speeding. In August and September 2011 the campaign focused on seat belt wearing. In each case the campaign comprised advertising on the issue and enhanced police enforcement aimed at educating drivers.
The target audience was defined as young men in the age range 18-35, a group which is well known to actively use social networks, to listen to the radio while driving, and periodically has the opportunity to communicate with the traffic police. Both campaigns were specifically designed to target this audience and to be low-cost, and therefore highly replicable elsewhere in Ukraine.
For the seat belt campaign there were additional elements such as poster advertising on the backs of 100 buses (10% of the bus fleet in Odessa) and 10,000 in-car air fresheners were produced for distribution by the DAI as reminders to drivers to “buckle-up”.
Download the summary of the project here.
To view videos about the project use the following links:
http://www.irfnet.net/20_minute_EN.wmv (English)
http://www.irfnet.net/20_minute_UA.wmv (Ukrainian)
http://www.irfnet.net/20_minute_RU.wmv (Russian)
News articles about the project:
http://finzah.com.ua/113/news/5222.html
http://pult.com.ua/news.php?id=20556&world=1
Article on the project published in ‘Safety & Security’, March/April 2012 Edition: Download PDF
