During the last decades the main effort for the improvement of traffic safety at the local level was engineering and enforcement. Till now there is only a little experience of the effects of local PR campaigns. The paper describes the basis and assumptions for such a concept in the Federal Republic of Germany and the division of labour between federal and local institutions. All those campaigns had been done in a centralized manner mainly induced by the German Road Safety Association, but a special effort by each individual participant for increasing traffic safety did not happen. The background of Darmstadt is very suitable for such an experiment, because the city belongs to the "top ten" of the risk statistics. of the risk statistics. In 1986 a first field trial was done in a residential area in Darmstadt (6,900 inhabitants, 75 ha) to find out the conditions for slowing down the speed voluntarily. A professional advertising agency was engaged to develop a concept for graphical communication to convince people for reducing speed in residential areas (30 km/h); no other measures were provided. This innovative approach and the results will be discussed. The reduction of the mean velocity by 11% is surely not enough, but it shows that the soft policy of public relations can be effective under certain circumstances. In 1988 the government of the state of Hessen decided to test the French "Minus 10%"-idea as a part of a new traffic safety policy. Two rural districts and the city of Darmstadt take part in this programme which is unique in the Federal Republic of Germany. The results of this second example are very promising; within 12 months the accidents with injuries were reduced by 10.6%. This public relations campaign not only changed the behaviour of car drivers, but also changed the awareness of the public and political parties in Darmstadt.
Abstract