Engaging young people
One of the most important ways that we can engage
younger drivers is to ensure that the information
presented to them, in whatever form, is up-to-date,
relevant and important ‘here and now’. Having designed
a good quality intervention (whether that be a play, a
PowerPoint, a virtual reality film, a pledge or a social
media approach) don’t forget to think about how it is
delivered. This can mean the choice of words, choice of
images and the choice of person or people to deliver it.
Words used with and presented to this audience should
be easily understood by them, without professional
jargon. The legal position should be explained, but this
should be combined with evidence about the risk of
legal hands-free use. The increased consequences of
being caught within two years of passing a driving test
should also be explained.
We should also aim to encourage young drivers to
believe that they are in good company when they
are acting in safe and legal ways. This is when peer
pressure can work in our favour, as we exploit the desire
to fit in and be part of the ‘in-group’¹. Young drivers
will often be told that they are over-represented in the
statistics for death and serious injury, but are less likely
to be told that most of their peers wear seatbelts, don’t
drink and drive, and resist their phones when driving².
The theory behind this approach comes from both BCTs
(p22) and procedural justice (p60) – just from slightly
different starting points.
Another way to make the most of what we know about
young people is to exploit their FOMO – Fear Of Missing
Out. We know that young people are particularly
likely to use their phones for social networking
purposes – because they fear missing out on what
their friends are doing (wearing, eating, watching…)³. If
social relationships are important, then they need to
be preserved, by not putting friends in danger, losing
their licence, or by crashing and Missing Out on a lot
more than someone’s Instagram of their new eyebrows.
Non-drivers can be encouraged not to call people
when they are driving, or to offer to take calls for drivers.
Peer pressure can be used, again, to encourage young
people to ‘boycott’ unsafe drivers (whether they be
friends or family members).
The Honest Truth approach (p37) has some useful
suggestions for strategies to promote to empower
young people when they feel unsafe.
¹ Blader, S. TylerT. R. (2009), ‘Testing and Expanding the Group Engagement Model’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 94: 445–64.
² Deighton, C. and Luther, R., (2007). Pre-driver education-a critical review of the literature on attitude change and development, good practice in pre-driver
education and programme effectiveness. Road Safety Research Report.
³ Przybylski, A.K., Murayama, K., DeHaan, C.R. and Gladwell, V., (2013). Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out. Computers in
Human Behavior, 29(4), pp.1841-1848.
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