It’s difficult enough to measure the effect of any road safety interventions – let alone those introducing mindfulness as a tool to improve behaviour. Social media relies on short (often unexplainable to the over 50s!) content to get noticed by the target audience – but can be targeted much more efficiently by social media platforms.

Mindfulness is beginning to be looked at for incorporation into diversion courses and specialist driver training courses (Guild of Mindful Driver Trainers), with research papers indicating that those practising mindfulness were at less risk on the roads.

In a city such as Brighton & Hove many collisions are put down to “failed to look properly”; improving focus on the roads would appear to have significant opportunities to reduce casualties. But can mindfulness techniques be harnessed to achieve this?

Keith Baldock, Road Safety Officer, Brighton & Hove City Council

Keith Baldock is a road safety officer with Brighton & Hove City Council. He has a key interest in distraction/failure to look collisions and how to minimise these.

Brighton Council’s local ‘Share the Roads, Share the Responsibility’ campaign has run through 11 iterations using a variety of methods to attempt to effect behaviour change.

Mind in Gear - using ‘mindfulness’ in a short social media campaign - is the latest attempt. While the statistics can be manipulated to illustrate some benefits from the ‘Share the Roads’ campaign, further work to attempt to determine effectiveness - and how to effectively employ mindfulness on the roads - is needed, and Keith believes the effort will be worth it!