Text messaging pilot achieves encouraging results
Liverpool City Council’s groundbreaking pilot scheme to utilise text messaging via mobile phones to deliver a drugs road safety message has met with encouraging results, according to Fred Pye, the City Council’s principal road safety officer.

The three-month pilot, which ran from November 2002 to February 2003, took the form of a competition to win a city break for two persons in Paris. Entrants were invited to text their postcode to a given number for a cost of 50p - a percentage of which is paid to the City Council, giving it a revenue stream from the project.

"The pilot has finished and in all we had just under 1,000 hits which was very encouraging," Fred Pye says. "We also received requests for information about the initiative from all over Great Britain and Ireland, including the DfT in London. We also had enquiries from South Africa and Australia - I think all these came as a result of coverage of the scheme on the LARSOA website."

As a result of the success of the pilot, Fred says LARSOA’s northwest group is looking at the potential for rolling the idea out regionally, which Fred describes as "very exciting, should it happen".

"I have no doubt that we will use texting again in Liverpool, should funds become available," he concludes.

More information about the scheme can be obtained from Fred Pye, Fred.Pye@liverpool.gov.uk or from www.liverpool.gov.uk/citybreak