This Road Safety Week I wanted to highlight an organisation, and group of students, that exemplified this year’s theme of leadership in road safety.

Back in 2016, Hard Edge – a creative agency specialising in behavioural change – collaborated with Swinburne University of Technology School of Design to launch the Re:act program.

Re:act provides design students with the opportunity to develop and pitch creative campaigns to real life clients, and the best part? The campaigns they develop are designed to raise awareness of road safety issues among their peers, 18 to 25 year olds.

In 2018, students were tasked with educating young people on the risks of sharing the road with trucks, and to positively influence their behaviour to reduce crashes and ‘near misses’ with trucks.

The winning campaign developed by bright sparks, Charlotte Hicks, Grace Kirby and Caitlyn Preyser ran with a slogan you couldn’t miss: ‘Don’t Truck Around’.

During the campaign development process, students met truck drivers to understand the challenges they face on the roads, day in, day out.

This year the Re:act program has expanded to Sydney with UTS and students are coming up with creative ways to increase the sense of shared responsibility for road safety between vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists and motor vehicles. Campaigns will be pitched and winners decided on 15 May in Melbourne and 16 May in Sydney so #stayalert for updates.

The initiative is supported by and involved collaboration with the TAC, RACV, Transurban, Australia Post, Telstra, Transport for NSW, IAG, 3M and the National Road Safety Partnership Program.

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