Road Safety Initiative in the Region of Waterloo In 1996 Transport Canada adopted its inaugural Road Safety Vision to make this country’s roads the safest in the world. The vision was adopted by the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators (CCMTA) and officially endorsed by all ministers of Transportation and Highway Safety throughout Canada. This vision was recently updated with the adoption of Canada’s Road Safety Targets to 2010. It is believed that the inclusion of targets will garner broad buy-in from road safety stakeholders and the general public alike as well as provide Canada’s road safety community with the impetus to achieve its vision of having the world’s safest roads. The targets are directed at a reduction in the number of persons either killed or seriously injured in motor collisions1 . The Region of Waterloo, the local municipalities, and the Waterloo Regional Police Service (WRPS) are concerned with road safety, and particularly with the increase in the number of collisions occurring in the area. More than 12,000 collisions occur annually on Regional and local roads, of which approximately 9,000 are of a reportable nature. Staff from the Region, the WRPS and the local municipalities has developed a traffic safety program to reduce the number of collisions and to address the targets established by Canada’s Road Safety Vision. A working group was established and it developed a vision statement, objectives, and sub-targets to achieve a reduction in the number of collisions on the region’s roads. The following specific sub-targets will be benchmarked against comparable 2000 to 2002 baseline data: – a 5% decrease in the number of road users killed or injured in collisions involving a drinking driver; – a 5% reduction in the number of road users killed or injured due to aggressive driving, including speeding; – a 5% decrease in the number of road users killed or injured not wearing their seatbelts or using safety restraints; and – a 5% decrease in the number of collisions involving drivers over the age of 55 that result in people being killed or injured. In order to achieve these results an aggressive social marketing campaign was developed in partnership with the local media. This paper will outline the need for this initiative and present the campaign development process, including collision data, campaign messaging, focus group testing, and partner negotiations and advertising plan detail.
