I saw a couple of safety campaigns in public spaces

Tomasz Kaye
Jul 23, 2017 · 3 min read

On Facebook I saw a video of a campaign ostensibly to ‘promote pedestrian safety’. I saw pedestrians being startled by the sound of screeching car tyres as they crossed a street.

The sound was being played through a hidden speaker and was triggered when the pedestrians crossed the street before the sign had changed to green. A hidden camera took a photograph of the people’s startled faces and displayed it on a nearby billboard with a warning that jaywalking can be lethal.

Many responders thought this was a great stunt and unreservedly praised the ingenuity of the designers. This bothers me because it seems unjust, I mean the treatment of these people by the campaign designers, as well as by commenters on social media.

As far as we know, the victims of the stunt have looked carefully before crossing and know that no vehicle is nearby. Then, while safely crossing, they are blasted by an unexpected sound. Of course they’re going to look startled! It seems unjust to me that their understandably shocked faces and clumsily defensive postures are held up as a ‘gotcha’, as thought they’re evidence of guilt, or of recklessness.

Their ‘crime’, at worst, was failing to abide by one of the paternalistic rules that the French nanny state imposes on subjects using its ‘public’ space. An law against jaywalking. For that they don’t deserve to be shamed.

Their suffering, in the end, is mild to be sure. Nevertheless, I notice I’m bothered by apparent indifference of my contacts on social media to the guilt or innocence of the victims of the trick. I have trouble understanding the perspective of those who appear fine with it (particularly when I know they identify as libertarians).

The exchanges most riling to me were with those apparently impressed by the effectiveness of the campaign on one hand, but dismissive of the injustice I complained of, on the grounds that I’m taking the whole thing too seriously.

When I look for substance in the statement “You’re taking X too seriously” I get to something like “I don’t share your concern about X, and my subjective evaluation of the matter is correct while yours is wrong”. To me that’s just bad manners.

I came across a more humane awareness-raising campaign in public space in Rotterdam yesterday. At the Coolsingel end of de Meent, where cyclists wait for their light to change there’s some illuminated text attached to the pole. Some chart music is playing from a small speaker. The text tells me to press the button again to advance to the next song. It says that I’m listening to the playlist of a 13 year old boy killed in an accident on his bike while selecting music on his phone.

As the light changed to green I felt like I was having to exert some mental effort to detach from the story and from thinking about the design of this campaign, about its effect on me, and instead focus on the movement of nearby vehicles. Cars tear through red lights in Rotterdam regularly. I wondered if the designers considered that their campaign, its strengths notwithstanding, also competes for cyclists’ attention that’s otherwise on the road. Did that consideration make it into a calculus about its estimated effect?

Tomasz Kaye

Written by

Anti-political propaganda animations. Market anarchist. Netherlands.

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