We Don't Want New Members - Buckle Up
Last year the association ran a campaign in partnership with Arrive Alive that had the backing of the Minister of Transport, Mr. Dullah Omar. It had quadriplegics manning garages on national roads to persuade people to sign a "Pledge to buckle up book". According to the association’s national director Mr Ari Seirlis, among other aims, they want to:
The association ran its first project in June/July 2002 at three sites in KZN, Gauteng north and the Free State to evaluate the impact that this awareness would create, and to understand the logistics involved in deploying quadriplegics. It cost the association R32 228.00. Arrive Alive contributed by hiring jumping castles and distributing Arrive Alive T-shirts and caps. "The results of this programme allowed us to formalize a detailed plan for a December 2002 / January 2003 rollout," said Mr Seirlis. "One of the significant changes made as a result of lessons learnt, was that we printed licence disk holders instead of business cards as handout to motorists. We selected a single slogan, "Buckle up – we don’t want new members". We aim to brand this slogan as ours. The need for a register of signatures of motorists was identified, and we printed "pledge books" that were used at all seven sites. "The simple plan was as follows: quadriplegics with their helpers occupied the forecourt of designated garages and asked motorists to sign a pledge to buckle up on their journey to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities on roads. If motorists signed the pledge book, they were given a licence disk holder. A jumping castle was also at each site to allow children at no charge to expend their energies. Two banners at each garage announced the project. "I have no doubt that the awareness we created will have saved at least one person from being injured during this period, and if so, the cost of this campaign is negligible compared to what the cost would have been to the injured person, government and to society," said Mr Seirlis. In April this year, the Evert van Niekerk Road Safety Achievement of the Year Award, presented annually by the South African Motoring Journalists’ Committee for Active Road Safety (CARS), was awarded jointly to Ingwe Collieries’ Middelburg Mine Services and the Quadriplegic Association of South Africa. Making the award CARS chairman, Ian Auret, said: "They did pioneering work in changing the mindset of road users, and it is to be hoped that similar initiatives will spread throughout the country to help curb the daily carnage on our roads." CARS is a committee that operates under the auspices of the South African Guild of Motoring Journalists. It is made up of journalists from the electronic and print media and representatives from key organisations involved in promoting better road usage. The committee focuses on promoting safe motoring practices.
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THE above words may seem cryptic at first glance, but they are actually
quite powerful in expressing the horrors that accidents can wreak on
victims. "We don’t want new members buckle up", is the slogan
of the Quadriplegic Association of South Africa. And it uses it in its
campaigns to combat death on our roads.
