RESEARCH AND PLANNING (continued)

Understand Your Traffic Safety Topic

Review Data on the Scope of the Problem
Whatever your focus, you first need to understand the scope of the injury problem and the factors that contribute to it, both in general, and more importantly, for your specific target audience. A variety of local, state, and national data is available on motor vehicle, motorcycle, bicycle, and pedestrian injuries among Latinos, as well as on risk factors such as impaired driving and nonuse of safety belts and helmets.

For selected statistics and data sources on the traffic safety problem among Latinos, see appendix B, step2a.

Review the Research on Preventing Traffic Injuries

The information your material presents should be based on research about the following:

• the actions that individuals can take to reduce their risk of injury
• the programs and policies that best facilitate those actions

Individual Actions
Your familiarity with the research on actions that individuals can take to reduce their risk of injury (e.g., using safety belts, wearing bike and motorcycle helmets, using appropriate child safety seats, or not drinking and driving) will ensure that your material provides the most current and accurate information possible.

Effective Policies and Programs
Encouraging and facilitating safe behavior requires a variety of strategies, which are most effective when used in combination. Strategies can be categorized according to the “three Es” of injury prevention:

• Education: Educating the public and professionals on ways to reduce traffic injuries (by means of materials, trainings, etc.)
  
  
• Engineering and environmental changes: Modifying the environment (e.g., making roads safer or adding bike lanes) and making safety devices available (e.g., bike helmets and child safety seats for low-income families)
  
  
• Enforcement and legislation: Enacting and enforcing laws (e.g., those related to safety belt use and impaired driving)

For sources of information on effective strategies to reduce the risk of traffic injury, see appendix B, step 2b.

Refine Your Topic
Through research and meetings with your partners in the early stages of the project, you may decide to refine or modify your topic. For example, you might initially plan to address underage drinking and driving, but then decide to expand your focus to include other important topics that affect your audience, such as speeding and distracted driving. Or, after finding that infant seats are already in wide use among your target audience but booster seats are not, you might decide to narrow your focus from child passenger safety in general to booster seats in particular. You might also need to refine your target age group based on the groups you find to be most at risk of injury.