Journalism and Cycling 2: the difficult second album

Could we do this on a nationwide basis using the telly instead of a cinema, I'd suggest maybe during the toy show

My day job involves working for a company that has a very big presence in design, operational and construction safety and, as a consequences, employs many safety professionals. Some time back I was talking to one of the seniors about advertising campaigns like this, or the RSA ones where a driver loses control and crashes through a garden or crushes a young lad into a wall. His view is that these ads are of very limited effectiveness as the target audience are the sort of drivers who regard their skills as well above average and are well able to handle speed, texting & driving etc. So these dramatic accidents are things that only happen to "lesser" drivers.

We've had a similar safety issue in construction over the years - massive overconfidence in personal skills and abilities, allied with some plain stupidity (I had one young fitter tell me he didn't need to wear safety glasses as he wore contact lenses). It's taken a lot of work but some of the very large construction and infrastructure projects in Ireland now have world-leading safety performance with millions of hours being worked without any lost-time injuries. There were two aspects of the change in construction safety that may have some relevance in the road safety sphere:

1. Personalising the impact - its not just about you being dead / injured. There are a lot of people - some of whom you may even care about - that have to deal with impact of you acting like a c0ck.
2. Lecturing at the target audience from a podium (or a TV screen) doesn't work - you need to bring the target audience along with you by involving them, incentivising them, giving them responsibility.

Jesus wept.

Yes - there are consequences for both the individual and for their own employer, depending on the severity of the breach.

For large construction projects for multinational clients (data centres, biopharma, medical devices etc) there is a contractual requirement that engineers, constructors and contractors show a proven safety track record, with metrics, before they will be considered.

One afternoon a few years ago, I happened to be riding past one of the construction sites we were managing (for a client with an extremely stringent position on safety) at finishing time and, exactly as you've noted, the standard of driving from people leaving the site was appalling - people who, inside the site fence, had an exemplary safety record.

I spoke with the construction manager the following morning and while "words were had" with some of the offenders, we had neither carrot nor stick to impact worker behaviour on public roads.

Just seeing the pushback Donald Clarke got on Twitter for saying that, as a man of sixty who has never had a driver's licence, he thinks the implication that he lacks independence and is a burden is ludicrous. The pushback is mostly the usual how-dare-you-you-people-in-Dublin-argle-bargle, and fair enough, there are places where car-dependency is just a fact of life but the implication that normal people, people who don't get laughed at, drive habitually is unmistakeable, and it's in direct opposition to government and EU policy. They're not the good-driving agency.

(The RSA replied that the "burden" framing was one they got from young men in surveys. I bet they also could get some framing about what sort of magnet a car is. Might see that in the next ad they run.)

Yeah, though he seemed overall like a decent enough guy in any online interactions I had with him back when I used Twitter (I stopped posting back when Musk started opining about Varadkar not liking Irish people). I guess he can be a bit prickly (and pedantic about words in a way I'd personally regard as ahistorical).

What is particularly disappointing about the the current RSA position is that about 2 weeks ago, they had a representative on Radio 1 talking about their research into motorbike injuries. It was interesting to hear the rep talking about the risks bikers experienced from drivers and that some of the most common situations were as a result of poor driver behaviour. There was no attempt to victim blame.

Contrast that with the RSA approach to cyclists and pedestrians where the company line is based around the continued indemnification of motorists.

RSA on bikers hit by drivers: "The driver is not paying attention and needs to be more considerate"

RSA on cyclists hit by drivers "It's probably your own fault for not wearing The Magic Jacket"