Dont Truck Around Campaign to educate young drivers on sharing road with trucks

Re:act (short for Respond. Act.) is a behavioural change project for third-year design students at Swinburne University. Each year the students participate in a creative challenge with a goal of increasing the awareness of 18- to 25-year-olds about the dangers they may face on the roads. This year, “Don’t Truck Around” was named the winner of the road safety campaign, and the project will be turned into a $6,000 campaign across the Swinburne Hawthorn campus.

Re:act & the ATA

The Australian Trucking Association (ATA) will allow representatives from each of the top three finalists to pitch their campaign at Trucking Australia 2018. Furthermore, all the campaigns will be displayed at the conference. Delegates attending the conference get to vote for their favorite—with the winner receiving an industry choice award. “Not only has the Re:act project allowed us to engage with a young audience, but we have been able to gain insights into how they want to hear road safety messages and how they want us to communicate with them,” says ATA safety and skills adviser Melissa Weller.

Safety first

The ATA partners with Hard Edge, a creative agency, to use the students’ safety messaging inside the Volvo ATA Safety Truck, a travelling exhibition with displays that showcase how to share the road with truck drivers. “Previous projects have focused on safer use of mobile phones in vehicles and driving the morning after drinking,” says Andrew Hardwick, Hard Edge managing director. “With the number of trucks on our roads expected to double in the next 20 years, the 2018 campaign is another significant step in improving road safety among inexperienced drivers.”