Will a smart-ass ad blitz get you home safe?
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Will a smart-ass ad blitz get you home safe?
Step aside, Paws and Gentry. There's a new PSA campaign in town. It's a snarky attempt to get Philadelphians to stop, well, acting like idiots.
"It's road safety. Not rocket science," is the tagline of the "Ride Right Walk Right Drive Right" campaign just rolled out by Philly's Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities (which has in the past tried to meld humor with road safety by painting a distracted walking lane on the sidewalk near City Hall for April Fool's Day). Messages include things like "Thank you for not running pedestrians over" and "Objects in mirror appear only when looked at." The campaign cost $125,000, and is running on buses and bus stops. It will last for 10 weeks or longer. The funding came from a state grant.
Andrew Stober, chief of staff at MOTU, says PSAs are an accepted part of traffic safety practices: "We talk about the three 'E's of traffic safety: engineering, enforcement and education." At $125,000, education is clearly the most affordable to address, given tight budgets for police and transportation infrastructure. Stober says a pedestrian is hit by a car on average once every four hours in Philly. "All of these ads are targeted at the hghest-risk behaviors."
"Hopefully a little bit of snarkiness will engage people and get them to take that extra moment to think abou it," he says. "We just want people to get home safe at the end of the day and hopefully have a little smile on their face."
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