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The importance of supporting the next generations of road safety advocates

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BY: Umayangga Yogalingam, Parachute

ABSTRACT

Road traffic injuries and fatalities seriously threaten the health, well-being, and quality of life of Canadian youth. Reaching young drivers for the purpose of awareness and education presents unique challenges and opportunities compared to other demographic groups. The For Young Drivers, By Young Drivers project partnered and engaged approximately 300 young Canadians and a dozen experts to: 1) understand the facilitators, barriers, attitudes and perceptions that affect safe driving behaviours in young drivers and 2) identify new opportunities and channels to increase youth awareness of road safety issues. Findings from the project’s activities led to the development of the For Young Drivers, By Young Drivers framework, a tool to guide organizations and road safety stakeholders to reach and guide meaningful engagement of youth in road safety programming.

The importance of supporting the next generations of road safety advocates

Road traffic injuries and fatalities are a pressing public health issue among Canadian youth. Road crashes are one of the leading causes of death in youth aged 15 to 24 in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2020). Young drivers are also killed in crashes at a higher rate than any other age group under 75 years old (Statistics Canada, 2020).

Road traffic injuries and fatalities seriously threaten the health, well-being, and quality of life of Canadian youth. In addition to the most direct consequences of injuries and fatalities due to road crashes, there are several other consequences that impact young people's lives. These include the psychological toll on youth involved in a crash, the toll on their families, and the financial costs to individuals due to medical bills, vehicle repairs, loss in productivity, loss of income, etc. Unsurprisingly, road safety has a far-reaching impact on youth.

Reaching young drivers for road safety awareness and education presents unique challenges and opportunities. There is a complex web of factors that impact youth perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs about road safety, as well as their driving behaviour. Young drivers are highly influenced by their peer group while still looking to their parents as role models (Morrish, 2011); their cognitive, physical, and social skills are still developing (Delgado, Wanner, & McDonald, 2016); and the recency of cannabis legalization and the widespread influence of social media have contributed to risky driving behaviour among young drivers (Windle et al., 2019).

There is a need to shift the conversation away from victim-blaming youth and labelling them as the cause of unsafe roads. Instead, we should empower youth by equipping them with knowledge, skills, and strategies to engage in safer driving behaviours, and advocate for systemic changes in their communities that facilitate safer roads for all. The second Decade of Action for Road Safety, led by the World Health Organization, now recognizes youth as stakeholders (World Health Organization, 2021). This conversation shift is starting to take place globally.

Meaningful youth engagement and partnership can lead to more effective programming and healthier youth (Dunne, Bishop, Avery & Darcy, 2017). They are more likely to adopt health promotion and injury prevention strategies when they are involved in generation of knowledge than when adults develop the strategies without youth engagement and active participation. Youth must become true stakeholders and decision-making partners rather than having adults make decisions for them.

Recognizing the need for new, innovative strategies to reach and engage youth, Parachute created the For Young Drivers, By Young Drivers project. Informed by published research and other successful youth outreach efforts, almost 300 youth and a dozen experts across Canada and abroad were engaged via focus groups, interviews and a national survey to understand how youth think and feel about safe driving behaviours. Specifically, this initiative sought to uncover how youth behave, what influences their behaviours, who influences their behaviours and where they go for trusted information on road safety. The end product was a framework that outlines promising practices for engaging youth in road safety programming, messaging, and advocacy.

Figure 1. The For Young Drivers, By Young Drivers framework for youth engagement in road safety (retrieved from A Framework for Accelerating Youth Engagement in Road Safety print summary)

This framework (Figure 1) can drive all aspects of engaging youth in road safety programming. All youth engagement should (1) be meaningful; (2) integrate equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility; and (3) be done using a harm reduction lens in acknowledgement of youth’s realities. These three guiding principles ensure that youth engagement can be empowering, sustainable and impactful. Youth engagement can be categorized into five categories: partnership, communication, outreach, capacity-building, and advocacy.

These three guiding principles were significant and became recurring themes across all data collection activities. Many youth felt strongly that it was necessary to shift youth engagement in road safety programming to one that is empowering, sustainable, and impactful. Organizations are encouraged to establish what each guiding principle means in their context and outline policies and procedures to ensure these guiding principles are followed. For example, meaningful youth engagement can look like having a dedicated youth council that regularly meets to provide input and co-create programming with the organization.

Youth partnership entails long-term investment of resources, helps build youth’s skills and capacity, and enables a sustainable mechanism for continued youth engagement and development. Facilitating meaningful youth partnerships can include establishing a youth advisory committee, working with a network of youth ambassadors, integrating youth partnership into your organization’s strategic plan, and having youth involved in evaluating your road safety initiatives and messaging.

Youth communication means using effective strategies (i.e., messages) when communicating directly with youth about road safety through traditional, digital, and social media. This can be done by having youth co-design and test drive messaging with representative youth, staying current on social and digital media preferences and practices, using social marketing strategies that resonate with youth and storytelling to instill empathy and change youth attitudes and, subsequently, behaviours.

Youth outreach entails targeting youth’s knowledge, attitude, and behaviour through those who influence them, including peers, parents, schools, educators, and experts. Partnering with those in youth’s networks to deliver road safety messaging can increase receptiveness toward the messaging and increase the likelihood of engaging in safer driving behaviour. Strategies for youth outreach include engaging other youth to implement peer-to-peer communication and education, training parents to provide accurate and timely road safety information, using schools and educators as delivery mechanisms, and collaborating with experts and credible organizations.

Youth capacity-building looks at common road safety knowledge and skill gaps among youth and examples of effective strategies to address these gaps. These strategies can include conducting a needs assessment to understand what youth need to become better drivers, increasing and reinforcing gaps in road safety knowledge and skill through different methods, providing in-person and virtual opportunities to practise skills that promote safe driving, and incentivizing youth to care about road safety and engage in safe driving behaviour.

Finally, youth advocacy can help rebuild the culture around driving behaviour to make being a responsible driver cool and attractive to youth. It can also help youth understand their role and responsibilities within the road safety ecosystem. Some ways to help facilitate youth advocacy include understanding what is important to youth, developing a youth advocacy toolkit and training opportunities and advocating to have youth in formal decision-making spaces.

Holistic and meaningful youth engagement that targets individual behaviour and systemic factors can go a long way to creating the next generation of road safety advocates. It is a significant step toward ensuring that youth are true stakeholders and decision-makers in road safety. It enables them to continue the impact work that many individuals and organizations have done to improve road safety for their communities.

For more information about youth engagement in road safety, visit: https://parachute.ca/en/program/for-young-drivers-by-young-drivers/.

Umayangga Yogalingam

Umayangga Yogalingam is a public health professional and Manager of Knowledge Translation and Programs at Parachute, Canada’s national injury prevention organization. Umayangga manages injury prevention programming and initiatives in youth road safety. Umayangga has worked in the non-profit and public health sector for over a decade and has several years of experience in community engagement, qualitative research, knowledge mobilization and youth health.

 References

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