“If people would just follow the rules, our streets would be safer.”

This statement is prevalent when it comes to public as well as professional discussions on road safety, even though research has shown that, not only are humans inherently fallible, but, even with perfect road user performance, serious and fatal crashes would not drop to zero.

However, we commonly see these opinions lead to ideas from communities where communications tactics are the primary tool seeking to attract attention and change behaviour. Ideas such as the following may be identified as the key tactic to change behaviour: “Post something snappy on social media,” “Create a video that goes ‘viral’,” or “Scare people with gore to make them change their ways.”

Trying to elicit better road user behaviour commonly falls back to using education or communications to achieve results. But, as we have dug into this deeper, attempting to lead the transformation of traffic safety culture with communications campaigns tends to be ineffective over the long-term.

To tackle this issue in a holistic and systemic way, our team worked with the City of Lethbridge to create the Traffic Safety Culture Transformation Framework. With funding from Transport Canada, not only does this Framework support Lethbridge’s actions, it also presents a guide for other communities in Canada.

Our multi-disciplinary team of communications, marketing, engagement, education, change management, behaviour, and road safety specialists dug deep into our collective experience. We used research-based surveys, in-depth interviews with local organizations, opt-in online engagement, surveys of families and students via schools, and review of crash data to better understand the local traffic safety culture in Lethbridge and attempt to explore differences between subcultures. From there, we went deeper with research and seeking input from a committee of culture change experts and practitioners to craft a holistic, long-term Framework.

The Framework’s Playbook targets actions to support the creation of positive road safety values and beliefs at stages of human development when these can be influenced.

In particular, the actions focused on early and middle childhood, where parental modelling and habits through travel to/from school provide opportunities to influence behaviour and attitudes. We crafted other actions for adolescents to help them solidify positive values and norms that lead to safe behaviours through training and leadership opportunities. And for adults, whose values and habits are often entrenched, we developed actions to support making safe choices easier and nudge them to adjust their behaviours.

The Framework is supported by a strong communications plan that allows the City of Lethbridge, or others who use the Framework in their communities, to strategically support the actions they are taking. In some cases, the communications may originate from the municipality, and others having a source of the messaging coming from grassroots and non-governmental organizations can be stronger and more successful.

An example implementation plan is provided in the Framework that focuses on actions and communications to address speeding. This was selected as an example because in Lethbridge the local attitudes and behaviours related to speeding were more misaligned. That is to say, people self-reported speeding more than other risky behaviours and believed that speeding is less dangerous and more accepted by the community than the other risky behaviours¾impaired driving, aggressive driving, and distracted driving.

Finally, the project includes direction on performance monitoring by outlining a suite of measures for inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impacts. This allows for leading indicators to be tracked while longer-term performance data emerges over time.

If you are interested in exploring traffic safety culture in your community and creating an implementable and impactful plan to transform it, please reach out. We would be thrilled to talk about our experience. If you are already working on traffic safety culture, we would love to hear from you as we work to create a community of practice across Canada.

You can download the Traffic Safety Culture Transformation Framework in English and French.