Graphic City Accident Ad Stirs Controversy
The City of Ottawa has been producing some graphic advertisements on road safety.
It has caused some controversy which has concerned people at city hall because this release came out at 7:16 p.m. on Saturday. That’s not exactly when you send out missives from the municipal government.
If you want to cover things up, you send releases out late on Friday afternoon or evening. But Saturday evening means there’s really something up.
This is a fascinating and important issue. The words below are well-chosen and sound like a truthful conversation between adults who are thoughtful stakeholders in this city. That’s a big step up from the lies and spin that two-year-olds can see through which is the usual fare of city hall.
Much credit to Alain Gonthier, the general manager of public works for the City of Ottawa, for addressing this issue in an intelligent and mature way. Thank you.
Below is a release from the City of Ottawa
Mayor and Members of Council,
I want to start by apologizing for not giving Council a heads up on a set of test ads that are running in advance of rolling out an official road safety campaign later this fall. I am committed to consulting with Members of Council throughout the duration of the test campaign, expected to last a few weeks.
We acknowledge the graphic nature of the visuals. The evidence-based strategy and approach this campaign is using has been developed based on the city’s collisions data on fatalities and serious injuries. The ultimate goal is to reduce this number to zero. This approach has been done in other jurisdictions around the world and is in line with a safe systems approach to road safety, whereby all users of the roadway have a shared responsibility for their safety. We believe this approach will depict the serious nature of road safety and lead to a greater awareness to all road users of their responsibilities, which will contribute to our goal of saving lives.
Attached are the ads that are part of the testing phase and shown in different sets. As part of a process called “A/B testing”, multiple versions of the same advertisement are sent to a small sample size to assess which ads would be best to launch in a larger campaign. This is a standard approach to large campaigns as to avoid investing in ineffective advertising. In this case, there is a different look and feel to the versions, and the ads are from the different perspectives of different road users. There is no intent to use all of the test advertisements as part of the larger campaign. The image that is currently being shared online is only one of the multiple versions that were created to test the advertisements.
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These test ads, which were released on a limited basis, are part of the City’s Road Safety Action Plan, which aims for a 20% reduction in the average annual rate of fatal and major injury collisions by 2024 with a longer-term goal of zero fatal and major injury collisions. The Plan incorporated input from residents, community stakeholders, and road safety advocates and experts. It includes engineering, such as street design improvements, enforcement and education-based countermeasures to address fatal and major injury collisions in the four emphasis areas: vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists), intersections, rural areas and high-risk driver behaviour.
The test ads are part of developing the education component, which has the overall aim of de-normalizing unsafe road behaviour and developing a culture of road safety in Ottawa. This is a behavioral change campaign that is founded on our data on fatal and major injury collisions and research into the public’s behaviour and perceptions.
The test ads will be running for a few weeks The testing compares two different approaches to images and messaging, although both are hard-hitting, and the results will inform the final direction of the campaign. Depending on the ad, we look at the incident from both perspectives – the person who was crossing, and the driver. These test ads and the campaign itself target our primary demographic, males aged 18-44.
For behavioural change to be effective, the public must first relate to the subject matter and accept accountability for their actions. Towards that end, we focus on the human element and put a face on the issue rather than impersonal data or statistics, even though the campaign is data driven.
About 25% of all fatal and major injury collisions on Ottawa’s roads involve pedestrians. Of those, data collected between 2017 and 2021 indicates that:
- 29% of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian was crossing a road midblock (away from an intersection)
- 23% of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian with the right-of-way was struck at an intersection by a left turning driver
- 11% of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian who did not have the right-of-way was struck by a vehicle travelling straight through an intersection
While the initial reaction is focused on the pedestrian “jaywalking”, we also have a similar pedestrian injury test ad that speaks to driver behaviour. We realize that seeing only the pedestrian behaviour seems unfair or an incomplete picture. Likewise, there are ads with cyclist injuries speaking to driver and or to cyclist behaviour, as the data supports. Part of the evaluation of the test ads will be to investigate how to resolve seeing only of the vulnerable road user behaviour ads to ensure that we portray the full picture of road safety.
We’ll Meet These Transit Targets Whatever They Are
The choice of more impactful visuals and messaging is in line with what other governments are doing around the world. We’ve included some samples below and note that the content in them is indeed disturbing.
- Ads from Sécurité routière au Quebec
- Au volant, ralentissez
- World’s Best Creative Road Safety TV Ad Commercials
- Transport Accident Commission Victoria, Australia, Zero – the only number we should accept
- New Zealand ad featuring a police officer’s experience with speeding
- New Zealand campaign targeting young male speeders
- Transport Accident Commission Victoria, Australia ad, There’s no one someone won’t miss
- Quebec’s ‘Don’t walk’ campaign
We appreciate the feedback. It will inform our decisions going forward as we finalize the content of the ads in advance of launching the official campaign this fall. As mentioned, we will consult with Member of Council during the test period and we will share the ad campaign with Council prior to releasing the ads to a broader audience.
Alain Gonthier
General Manager, Public Works Department
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Hasn’t “behavioral change campaigns” been tried in the past by evil regimes? What about ads on how the City can better design streets or why huge transport trucks should not be driving through the middle of the downtown in the Nation’s Capital or how the homeless live in the city and are dying from fentanyl use or on the risks and stresses from taking the City’s public transit system etc etc
Dan:
Really good comment.
cheers
kgray
I take issue with the advice to pedestrians to always cross at intersections. I have twice come close to being killed as I crossed Carling at intersections WITH THE WALK SIGNAL. Left turning drivers didn’t see me, or didn’t care. Carling, in my neighbourhood, has a nice, wide grassy median, so I feel quite safe crossing one direction at a time without having to dodge cars. My advice would be cross where it’s safe and don’t count on drivers to yield.
Dan, one “behavioural change campaign” that did work was the awareness of and penalties for driving under the influence. It took a generation or more to have a material impact on our behaviour, but it is my understanding that, while not down to zero, the number of intoxicated driving related injuries and deaths have fallen.
Having said all of that, I agree that road design matters. Unfortunately, the city’s past and current behaviour is to create road designs that are hazardous to non-vehicle users. High speed straight aways. Long swooping curves in residential areas that limit the line of sight of a driver to anyone or anything further up the road. “S” curves beside homes that have been built close to the curb (urban planning flavour of the month from a decade or two ago) that limit drivers’ lines of sight to tens (rather than hundreds) of metres.
The city’s response to requests for mid block cross overs with flashing yellow lights generally takes two forms:
> not enough warrant points; and
> pedestrians should walk the extra several hundred metres to cross safely.
By way of example, there is a section of Baseline Road near Southwood Drive to the north and Rockway Crescent to the south (about midway between Centrepointe Drive and Greenbank) that is particularly hazardous. There are bus stops on either side of Baseline. Many OC Transpo riders using those bus stops must cross Baseline, a 60 kph zone where speeds are more in the 80 kph range, at their own peril. A number of years ago, a young woman, running across Baseline to catch the bus slipped and fell under the wheels. It ended in a tragedy.
The response from the city’s traffic management group was that OC Transpo bus riders should use the bus stop on the side of the road nearest the cross walk at either Centrepointe Drive or Greenbank. These are at least a hundred metres away. Nice walk in a November rain. The suggestion of a cross over was dismissed with a wave of the hand as being impractical.
Very simply put, it is not just pedestrian behaviour that needs to change. The attitudes that are endemic to the traffic engineering department in Ottawa’s city hall have been and remain a major contributing factor.
It is time for Mr. Gonthier to have a meaningful discussion with his colleagues in the traffic engineering and traffic management departments. To have an adult discussion about how their failures to take in to account the safety of the non-vehicle users of our roadways is a MAJOR contributing factor to injuries and deaths. The end product of these discussions needs to be a material increase in the budget for the implementation of road safety fixtures, such as cross overs, medians for pedestrians to stand on between lanes of oncoming traffic. It needs to involve the subdivision design approval group acknowledging that road safety is far more important than attractive design elements when viewed on Google Earth.
Ultimately, it is up to council to make this a priority. In the next round of budget preparation, ensure that the road safety funding is enhanced. Where does the money come from? How about redirecting some from lower priority projects (cough cough Lansdowne 2.0 cough cough)?
In kindergarten and we listened as Elmer the Safety Elephant taught us how to stay safe. That was back in the early 1960s and I’m still around doing the things I learned from Elmer when I was five years old, i.e. walk facing traffic, wear white at night, don’t run from between parked cars. I believe that focus on educating people is more effective than trying to scare them into proper behaviour.
sisco, I got the same lessons from my mother as the ones you got from Elmer the Safety Elephant. And as my mother regularly reminded my siblings and me, she was never wrong.
The explanation given by Mr. Gonthier is consistent with best practices in many for profit organizations. A limited set of alternative forms of advertising are presented, and people are asked for their reactions. While there is seldom a right answer, that does not preclude some answers from being wrong.
This is a rare occasion where a city manager actually used best practices and he got stomped on by a number of people, some in positions of authority, most of whom fall into the category of the perpetually offended. What does that say about those who speak first and ask questions, not later, but never? After all, they already have all the answers, right there on their worn out cue cards.
So here’s a suggestion. Let Mr. Gonthier and his group complete their analysis. Let them write a fulsome report that describes the choices that they made, supported by the underlying logic and statistics, and the results of the study. Have them present their report to committee and council and then sit back and observe the theatre of the absurd, sometimes referred to as city council.