We were recently involved in the European Road Safety Tunes final conference that took place in Warsaw, Poland. The conference brought together participants from all participating countries to showcase all the positive outcomes of the project, which saw youth all around Europe using creativity to engage in road safety. The result being an array of colourful outputs, with youth using their imaginations to convey road safety messages.
Results of the European Project European Road Safety Tunes were presented to 91 conference-participants in Warsawa at the premises of Motor Transport Institute (ITS). The coordinator of the project Elke Weiss from Austrian Mobility Research, Mr. Konrad Romik, secretary of the polish national Road Safety Council in the Ministry of Infrastructure and Construction and Marcin Slezak, the general director of the Motor Transport Institute, welcomed the participants.
Participants to the conference heard about the how young people engaged with road safety.
The project “European Road Safety Tunes” – From idea to realization, Elke Weiss, FGM-AMOR
The coordinator presented the reason for the project and its main objectives. The aim of the project is to improve road safety by reducing accidents, injuries and fatalities of young drivers by raising awareness for a responsible and social behaviour in traffic, through attractive youth oriented workshops and actions. The Safety Tunes methodology combines a peer approach, an emotive know-how transfer and social art with road safety. A practical and creative “feeling and understanding” of risky behavior should lead to a changing in attitudes and behavior.
The methodology was presented by Hannelore Depypere (Mobiel21) in interaction with the audience. The modules feel it – know it – do it – spread it were explained and examples from each module were shown.
Presentation of outputs of the project from students and partners
The focus of the conference was the presentation of the creative results of vocational students from the participating countries Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Spain and the Netherlands.
Informal exchange round of experts, Discussion round
After Lunch, Tina Panian (FGM) moderated a discussion round with experts from Hungary (Edina Fóris, teacher), Czech Republic (Ivo Rusak, traffic and transport expert and Jaroslav Heinrich, HBH), Slovenia (Marta Novak, national road safety expert for kindergarten, primary school and high school level, National Education Institute Slovenia), Spain (Daniel Macenlle, police officer), Belgium (Hannelore Depypere, Mobiel 21), England (Manpreet Darroch, YOURS) and Hungary (Maria Bognar, GRSP Association Hungary).
Experience in working with young people in road traffic safety and the implementation of safety tunes were exchanged and the safety tunes methodology and the transfer to other countries were discussed. All the participants in the expert round agreed that it would be useful to continue the methodology of safety tunes after the end of the project. The students also took part in the discussion and confirmed the impact of the SafetyTunes method on their behavior in road traffic. The conclusion that emerged in the discussion with the students was: “Let’s make road safety sexy”.
Our YOURS communications director Manpreet Darroch said, “European Road Safety Tunes is a brilliant way of engaging young people in road safety in Europe. YOURS is a big fan of creativity in road safety as young people are inherent creators. They are at the forefront of technology innovation and finding new ways to do things better, easier, more efficiently but also finding the element of fun. I think European Road Safety Tunes is a great example of how young people can create unique road safety messages that speak to other young people”.