Evaluation of a Road Safety Awareness Campaign Deployed along the Roadside in Saguenay (Québec, Canada)

Abstract

For the past few years, police officers from the City of Saguenay have been installing a billboard combined with a damaged car along roadsides to make drivers aware of the road risks related to dangerous behaviors at the wheel. To assess the short-term effect of this device, evaluative research with a quasi-experimental design with pre-exposure, during, and post-exposure. The results show a significant decrease (p < 0.001) of 0.637 km/h for the first site (a 70 km/h zone) and 0.269 km/h for the second site (a 50 km/h zone) when the device is exposed. At the time of this last evaluation, a reduction of 1.255 km/h remained even after the advertising panel was removed. Although minimal, this speed reduction where the billboards are placed shows the police that this awareness-raising approach works since it reduces the speed of motorists at very low cost.