Motorcycle safety campaigns in Australia - would a national approach in the digital age achieve better results?

This presentation looks at the current state of motorcycle safety marketing in Australia, and makes suggests more might be achieved with greater cooperation between the jurisdictions. As the number of riders in Australia has grown at around 7% per year over the past decade, riders were targeted with campaigns aimed in part at discouraging the use of motorcycles rather than addressing issues such as shared responsibility on the roads. The 2008 Motorcycle and Scooter Safety Summit held in Canberra should have been the trigger to change things, but did it? The expansion of social media has changed the way messages are received and shared too. This is part of an increased challenge now facing the marketing of motorcycle safety in Australia. National print magazines each have an online presence; and thousands of riders are regularly participating in a range of forums on the web. At the same time, we continue with jurisdiction-based road safety marketing campaigns. This can result in a flood of sometimescontradictory campaigns. Are the mixed messages drowning each other out? Would it make more sense to coordinate this effort across Australia?