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<p>Road safety education includes a range of interventions including educational courses
and publicity campaigns.</p><br /><p>The Department funds the THINK! road safety publicity
campaign. We evaluate the campaign to ensure it is effective, that we continually
improve performance; and that we ultimately deliver value for money for the taxpayer.</p><br
/><p>Prior to each campaign we set communication objectives and key performance indicators.
We measure progress against these by running surveys with our target audience before
and immediately after the campaign. We have seen positive shifts in key performance
indicators for the majority of our campaigns. All of our recent campaign evaluation
reports are published on gov.uk<sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup>.</p><br /><p>In the long
run, positive changes in key performance indicators on campaigns such as speeding,
drink driving and seatbelts have correlated with fewer drivers exceeding the speed
limit, fewer accidents involving drink driving and higher seatbelt wearing rates;
and ultimately to fewer road casualties.</p><br /><p>Publicity campaigns are part
of the solution to reduce road casualties and work best when used alongside enforcement
and engineering interventions. Due to the multiple factors affecting casualties (weather,
road conditions, traffic levels, the economy etc.) it is difficult to demonstrate
a causal relationship with a specific intervention. However, in 2012 the department
commissioned an independent agency to evaluate the impact drink drive campaigns have
had on casualties. They used econometric modelling to estimate that over a 30 year
period, drink drive communication campaigns have saved almost 2,000 lives and prevented
over 10,000 serious injuries<sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup>.</p><br /><p>In 2013, the Transport
Research Laboratory published<sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup> a review and synthesis of evidence
on the effectiveness of pre-driver education and training for those under 17 years
of age which was undertaken for the Coalition Government. The findings showed that
very few interventions had been robustly evaluated and that the evidence base around
pre-driver interventions was weak. The Government recently commissioned an evidence
base review, to build on existing work, to help us to understand the effectiveness
of a range of pre- and post-test behavioural and technological interventions for young
drivers. The Government is currently also funding an evaluation of the effectiveness
of speed awareness courses.</p><br /><p><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup> https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/think-communication-activity</p><p><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup>
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/drink-drive-30-years-of-communication</p><p><sup><sup>[3]</sup></sup>
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/249282/novice-driver-research-findings.pdf</p>
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