Road safety in France

In this feature we look at the work of La Prévention Routière, a private association, founded in 1949 by a group of insurance companies and other organisations with an interest in roads and road safety. With more than 200 000 members it is the largest road safety organisation in France - it’s closest equivalent in the UK is ROSPA.

"Our key priority is to reduce the number of road accidents and resultant victims," says Bernard Keller, La Prévention Routière’s director of communications. "We are active across France through our network of local communities.

"Much of our work is with schools in the field of road safety education. We produce a wide range of resources and materials for children and young people," Bernard adds. "But we also run training courses for adult road users who have been disqualified from driving through the points system, and retraining for the older generation."

La Prévention Routière also produces national road safety campaigns aimed at al road users and pedestrians. "One of our roles is to provide information for the general public about important road safety issues," Bernard says. "A major issue at the moment is ‘children in the car’, as it has become apparent that too many children are not properly protected in cars. We have recently produced a new leaflet dealing with a whole range of practical questions that a parent may want to know the answers too."

La Prévention Routière also works with business and industry to provide information, services and driver training to organisations running a fleet of vehicles.

"Finally, on a wider scale, we work with other groups and participate in joint ventures when there are major road safety events," Bernard adds.

Campaigns
La Prévention Routière launched two new publicity campaigns earlier this year – both very different in style and aimed at different audiences.

Mikou is a campaign for children of nursery or pre-school age (3 – 5 years). The principal campaign resource is a colouring booklet that tells the story of a little girl called Mikou who is out for a walk with her mother. Each page has a picture for the young reader to colour in as Mikou and her mother negotiate a busy street, cross the road and see examples of how things should and should not be done. La Prévention Routière produced and distributed 50,000 copies of the 32pp booklet in February 2003.

"The Mikou booklet is designed for parents to use with their children, not for teachers in school," Bernard explains. "The aim is to make the child work on concepts - including ‘near and far’, ‘in front and behind’, ‘left and right’ - which are then used in the road safety learning process. Understanding these concepts forms the basis of road safety education and they need to be mastered by the child before he or she can progress further."

Mikou also explains the basic road safety rules that apply when walking close to traffic - hold a parent’s hand, walk away from the road, don’t cross the road alone, etc.

In its latest campaign - Refusons d’etre des assassins, which broke on 5 March 2003 - La Prévention Routière is putting across the message that the smallest detail matters when driving – that the margin for error is small and the potential results catastrophic.

Through a series of posters and postcards the campaign demonstrates that using a mobile phone while driving, not wearing a seat belt, driving a little too quickly and drinking just a little too much alcohol, can all have disastrous results.

"We are all capable of marginally breaking the law and through this campaign we are showing that the consequences of doing so can apply to each one of us - not just people we might generally consider to be criminals. We can all very easily become criminals! This campaign highlights the fact that we are all responsible for the circumstances that result in road accidents."

Further information about La Prévention Routière or the two campaigns outlined in this article can be obtained from Bernard Keller: 01 44 15 27 63 or b.keller@preventionroutiere.asso.fr.