Successful campaigns for combatting public health issues related to driving have focused on three fronts: legislation, enforcement, and public outreach. While considerable efforts have been made at crafting legislation and providing for enforcement to combat distracted driving by commercial vehicle operators, outreach efforts have not been as successful in gaining the population’s attention. The United States Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration hosts the Commercial Motor Vehicle Web-Based Driving Tips site. This public outreach site is oriented towards commercial drivers and covers several safe- and defensive-driving topics, including distraction. This project involved updating distraction information contained within the site in order to ensure that the results of recent naturalistic studies of commercial driving were included, and simplified the site text in order to better convey the information. Additionally, due to the increasing amount of cross-border traffic, the material was reproduced in the Spanish language. The result was site text produced at a more appropriate reading level for the population, updated with results from recently published studies that provided information on distraction risks not previously identified. The process that was followed can be utilized for other targeted outreach efforts for distracted driving campaigns as well as for other transportation-related outreach programs. (Author/publisher)
Abstract