THE CHALLENGE
E-scooters have quickly become a regular sight on the streets of Britain. Fun, fast and a greener way to travel short distances… But not for everyone. For the blind and partially sighted community, these speedy, yet silent machines whizzing up and down the streets are literally a quiet menace. With the government on the verge of legalising the private use of e-scooters, we needed to urgently highlight the dangers and grab the spotlight in a credible, yet eye-catching way. And our campaign had to place Guide Dogs at the heart of this conversation, as a driving force for change.
THE IDEA
When it comes to road safety and speed – there isn’t anything more recognisable and memorable than crash test footage; human looking dummies being flung great distances by impact, the remnants of the vehicle and the realisation of the consequences to real people. So, we commissioned the first crash testing of e-scooters in the UK in order to dramatize and quantify their danger potential.
Working with industry leaders UTAC, crash tests were conducted at 15.5mph, the speed limit of government rental scheme scooters and of the most popular privately owned model in the UK. This gave us a headline no-one could ignore – e-scooters can kill when ridden at just 15.5mph. And shockingly, a test on a dummy equivalent to a three-year-old child found that a pre-schooler could be thrown 6.5m by the impact.
In addition, our consumer research found that e-scooters are ridden at higher speeds regularly. The average speed users admitted to is over 16mph, although nearly a third (31%) said they hit top speeds of higher than 21mph.
THE RESULTS
- 69 media articles in total
- 18 in-depth articles in national print and online media, including The Times, Guardian and Telegraph
- 24 broadcast pieces, including a 6-minute segment on BBC Breakfast with full slo-mo crash test footage, Sky News Radio, BBC South TV and LBC
- 19 regional print/online articles
- A 142% increase in awareness that e-scooters are dangerous to people with visual impairments (19% pre-campaign vs 46% post campaign)
- A 116% increase in those who think e-scooters are potentially fatal
- A 35% increase in awareness that e-scooters are dangerous to all pedestrians
- A 7% increase in agreement that the government should regulate the sale and riding of e-scooters
And Guide Dogs’ petition for action to stop illegal e-scooter use has – at the time of writing – amassed over 13,000 signatures of support. We are now working with Guide Dogs to keep the pressure on opinion formers and leaders with this campaign.
