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

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.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB55 Work Zone Traffic Control.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Shaw, John W
  • Klockziem, Timothy
  • Noyce, David A
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 13p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Evaluation and assessment; Public information programs; Safety propaganda; State departments of transportation; Work zone safety
• 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;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01557778
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-4135
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 25 2015 4:20PM