Young drivers reveal attitude shift around trucks in ATA-supported program
A video has been launched by the Re:act program, a collaboration between Swinburne University and creative agency Hard Edge, showing how truck safety awareness had successfully changed the attitudes and behaviours of young drivers around trucks.
Aimed at 18- to 25-year-olds, the video also featured the perspective of truck drivers, including a survivor of a fatal accident with a car driver, and how that incident had impacted on his life.
‘Design students inspire positive change in road safety’ shows how an improvement in understanding had changed the way students see trucks on the road and changed their driving patterns accordingly.
Hard Edge managing director Andrew Hardwick says the project aimed to ‘humanise’ truck drivers to promote improved interactions between cars and larger vehicles.
“The number of trucks on Australian roads is expected to double in the next 20 years and major projects, like the Melbourne Metro tunnel, are increasing interactions between cars and trucks, particularly on city roads,” Hardwick says.
“So we need creative and innovative ways to change attitudes and inspire drivers to change their behaviour around trucks.
“One of the main outcomes from Re:act 2018 is how little other road users understand about sharing the roads safely with trucks, and how that lack of understanding can put both parties at greater risk.
“The video shows that increasing understanding of how to drive safely around trucks, combined with ‘humanising’ truck drivers, inspires positive behaviour change.”
Some of the themes in the video include:
- a greater respect for truck drivers and the challenges they face
- the concept of a road as a ‘workplace’
- recognition of car driver responsibility and relationship with truck drivers
- understanding the perspective of truck drivers as people, beyond the vehicle they operate in.
Supported in 2018 by industry bodies including Australian Trucking Association, Melbourne Metro Rail Authority, National Road Safety Partnership Program, Transport Accident Commission, the Re:act program was established in 2015 with the aim of challenging students to develop solutions to road safety issues, while raising awareness and changing driving behaviour.
In 2018, the focus was on sharing the road safely with trucks.
Design students inspire positive change in road safety from Hard Edge on Vimeo.