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Title:

Overview of State DOT Online Work Zone Safety Public Service Announcements (PSAs)
Cover of Overview of State DOT Online Work Zone Safety Public Service Announcements (PSAs)

Accession Number:

01557778

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

Work zone safety is of paramount importance to state departments of transportation (DOTs) and other transportation agencies. Educating drivers on safer work zone driving practices is one of six work‐zone‐related strategies discussed in Toward Zero Deaths: A National Strategy on Highway Safety. Many state DOTs develop work zone safety Public Service Announcements (PSAs), often on an annual basis, but to date there have been very few assessments of the effectiveness of these campaigns. To gain a better understanding of current agency practices, the authors reviewed 43 Public Service Announcements (PSAs) posted by transportation agencies on YouTube. Overall, the viewing rates for the videos are low; at least one seatbelt PSA has a view rate more than 100 times higher than the most popular work zone PSAs. Videos that feature workers explaining the hazards of their job and asking drivers to “help keep all of us safe” appear to be the most appealing to YouTube viewers. Many of the PSAs attempt to compress several work zone safety messages (e.g. reducing speed, expecting delays, avoiding cell phone use, not texting, and being courteous) into a very short (e.g. 30 second) timeframe. Evidence from field studies indicates that drivers already reduce their speeds slightly at work zones. Since none of the PSAs provided a specific speed reduction recommendation, many viewers may think they already comply with the work zone speed reduction message, when in fact they are routinely speeding through work zones.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB55 Work Zone Traffic Control.

Monograph Accession #:

01550057

Report/Paper Numbers:

15-4135

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Shaw, John W
Klockziem, Timothy
Noyce, David A

Pagination:

13p

Publication Date:

2015

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Photos; References; Tables

Identifier Terms:

YouTube

Uncontrolled Terms:

Public service announcements

Subject Areas:

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors; I73: Traffic Control; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-4135

Files:

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Dec 30 2014 1:21PM