State departments of transportation, including the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT), are working towards eliminating roadway fatalities and serious injuries through initiatives like Towards Zero Deaths (TZD). Underpinning TZD, is the knowledge that a positive traffic safety culture, which is the shared beliefs (including values and assumptions) of a group that affect behaviors related to traffic safety, is needed with both the agency and the public. One strategy in this effort is to educate the public via traffic safety videos about the need for and benefits of safety countermeasures (e.g., roundabouts), as well as the consequences of risky behaviors (e.g., texting while driving), to ideally change their beliefs and influence their behaviors.
The objectives of this project are to: 1) identify and secure available safety content and purchase and deploy the appropriate equipment to display safety content; 2) survey the public to determine if they are paying attention to the videos shown at the Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) driver license stations and the County Treasurer offices; and 3) determine if the safety messages have an impact on the behavior of the viewing public.
If this project is successful, it will benefit Montanans by educating them about transportation safety to make them safer drivers, MDT by providing an additional tool for their safety awareness toolkit; and other agencies by being a transferable safety strategy.
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