Deliverable D 1.3 RESULTS OF META-ANALYSIS ... - cast-eu.org

Campaigns and awareness raising strategies in traffic safety — Deliverable D-1.1Table 7.25. Overall effect of road safety campaigns on road accidents and seatbelt useaccording to time at which outcome measure taken. The results are given after accounting forpublication bias. Each overall effect is based on n individual effects (excluding any artificialeffects generated by trim-and-fill).AccidentsSeatbelt useeffect(%)95%confidenceinterval (%)nSig.?(p < 0.05)effect(%)95%confidenceinterval (%)nSig.?(p < 0.05)beforeduring-13 (-17;-8) 84 yes +6 (-3;+17) 26 nobeforeafter-9 (-17;-0) 19 yes +29 (+17;+42) 54 yesbeforeduringafter-4 (-22;+18) 12 no +32 (+21;+43) 53 yesTable 7.25 shows no significant difference between accident reduction effectsduring the campaigns (-13 per cent) and after they have been carried out (-9per cent). There were too few effects in the before-during-after group toenable solid conclusions to be made, as reflected by the wide confidenceinterval of -22 to +18 per cent.Seatbelt usage rates are significantly greater after campaign completion, withpost-campaign rates increasing by 29 per cent compared with 6 per centduring the campaign. The overall effect of before-during-after studies wascomparable to that of the before-after studies.7.5.2 THEME AND COUNTRYThe overall effect of campaigns might be expected to vary according to thetheme of the campaign. Table 7.26 shows that the campaigns against drinkdrivingincluded in our sample appear to be very effective, resulting in anoverall significant 20 per cent decrease in accident counts. This is notsurprising since drink-driving is known to increase the risk of accidents morethan other behaviours addressed by campaigns. The effect of drink-drivingcampaigns on accidents cannot be aligned with their effect on drink-drivingbehaviour while evaluations of the latter are so variable. In any case drinkdriving campaigns may raise awareness among road users about road safetyin general, and in doing so decrease the likelihood of other behaviour thatmight lead to accidents. Such a mechanism might indeed explain whyseatbelt-themed campaigns reduce accident counts significantly by 8 per cent(Table 7.26), although this finding must be treated with caution while it isbased on only 5 individual effects.The poor overall effects of campaigns aimed at increasing driver awareness ofpedestrians are also based on only five individual effects. Finally, the overalleffect of speeding campaigns on accident counts appears to be poor (+3 percent), and is not statistically significant.76