With great horsepower comes great responsibility

Traffic

With great horsepower comes great responsibility

by Stephen Miller • November 7, 2009 12:58 pm

Via Copenhagenize comes this road safety campaign directed at children in the United Kingdom. The video embedded below is one of three television ads from the campaign. It does its best to scare children and blame the victim:

Who is the victim here, and who is the menace? The ad makes the girl out to be both victim (she was injured) and menace (she should have known better than to wear dark clothing). The automobile is presented as a faceless force of nature: its driver is completely absent in this scenario and the only part of the vehicle we see is the glow from its headlights. It's as if the girl had naively wandered into a lion's den. On the streets, she should've known better than to take on the mighty automotive beast without strapping on reflective armor beforehand.

In reality, there are two human beings in this situation. One is a girl crossing the street after dusk, reasonably looking both ways before stepping into the street. The other is an adult surrounded by the protective metal shell of an automobile, traveling at a comparatively high speed. The girl is clearly the more vulnerable road user. While all road users must behave prudently, this ad unintentionally illuminates the heart of the livable streets and traffic justice movements: the belief that our roads should be designed to protect the most vulnerable users, and that less vulnerable road users shoulder a greater level of responsibility to avoid crashes with those who are more vulnerable.

This ad does harm by ignoring the responsibility of the transportation department to provide a safe street. Yes, pedestrians can do their part as well and children need to learn to take care, but the ad absolves the driver of an identity and blames the girl for her own injuries.

11 comments — Share	— tags: Europe, pedestrian safety, road safety, video

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Comments

If a driver can't see something, what are they supposed to do? Yes the child is wandering into the lion's den if they wear dark clothes, can't be seen and cross where drivers don't expect them to be. The ad doesn't scare and then teach that children shouldn't go walking. The ad scares and then teaches them how to do it smartly. There's nothing wrong with this ad.

by crin on Nov 8, 2009 8:27 am

"Ignores the responsibility of transportation departments" -- I'm with you there. DOT officials, the media and elected leaders in Northern Virginia frequently talk about unsafe pedestrian conditions as a function of reckless drivers. The road conditions encourage recklessness and discourage walking and bicycling, or looking for pedestrians and bicyclists from behind the windshield.

by Douglas Stewart on Nov 8, 2009 9:44 am

This is one of the kookier points made here at GGW. They are just promoting kids make themselves seen when crossing the street! Cars are a part of life, and will be for any foreseeable future, loooks like a typical safety video to me.

by SA on Nov 9, 2009 8:22 am

While the government should provide safer streets for pedestrians, the point of the video is to encourage kids to wear brighter clothing when it's dark outside. I'm not sure throwing in a driver is really relevant in getting that message across.

by Arlingtonian on Nov 9, 2009 9:12 am

Their audience are not transportation planners seeking moral guidance, but dumb, young kids who might not survive another year of making decisions they don't know are risky. The fact that you can't help but speak to the first group while addressing the second may be inconvenient, but it doesn't make this a bad ad.

We demonize all sorts of other more marginal harms than automobile collision to a much greater degree, from child abduction to swine flu to vaccines to poisoned Halloween candy - think of the children!.

by Squalish on Nov 9, 2009 9:20 am

Exactly how would light-colored clothing have made this child more apparent to a driver than the driver's own headlights?

by Eileen on Nov 9, 2009 11:04 am

I think its easier for drivers to spot pedestrians on the side of the road if they're wearing bright clothing. (The same goes for people who run...I often see people wear reflective belts in my neighborhood if they're running when its dark outside.) Of course, if they're in the middle of the road, a driver's headlights should be more useful.

by Arlingtonian on Nov 9, 2009 11:26 am

I have mixed feelings--the purpose of the ad is to encourage kids to be safe, not to advocate for good street design. It uses the words "traffic" and "car" instead of "driver", dehumanizing the interaction. It depicts the girl barely glancing right and left, but doesn't address that problem. I'd settle for the same ad with a few words changed.

As a side note, did anyone notice the grammatical error? The title should be, "The Girl Who Didn't Dress Brightly in the Dark".

by Matthias on Nov 9, 2009 5:56 pm

I come down closer to Mr. Miller than to some of the critical comments above but don't share his black/white victim vs. menace mentality. Motorists are not evil but neither do they remain blameless for participating in a system that promotes driving while penalizing walking and biking.

While it is imperative for kids to dress visibly and to be properly guided by parents, teachers, and public officials, they cannot do it alone.

We have built up an infrastructure that promotes driver convenience over vulnerable user safety. Drivers, who are adults and trusted with complex and at times lethal vehicle operation, and the government functionaries who design, build, and enforce laws on the roads, bear the lion's share of responsibility for roadway safety with respect to kids. Kids need to be taught to be as safe as possible, but they cannot be expected to have the maturity of mind to take on a major portion of responsibility for their own safety.

Slow down, stay alert, take on all possible responsibility for roadway safety, and live and let live.

Khal Spencer

Traffic Justice Institute Participant,
2006 Pro-Bike/Pro-Walk, Madison, WI

County Transportation Board Chair
Los Alamos County, NM (speaking for myself here)

by Khalil Spencer on Nov 9, 2009 10:27 pm

Exactly how would light-colored clothing have made this child more apparent to a driver than the driver's own headlights?

The contrast that the driver perceives is proportional to:

(the brightness of the child's clothing) * (the brightness of the headlights) / (the distance between the headlights and the child squared)

Make it reflect twice as much light, you make it twice as visible.

by Squalish on Nov 9, 2009 10:40 pm

@Matthias: It's not that the grammar is wrong, but that you've stubbled on one of the differences between US English and English English. I know it's correct in English English, I just can't tell you why. (I'm not a grammarian ... but I've lived on 'the other side of the pond'.)

by Lance on Nov 11, 2009 5:18 pm