“It Shouldn’t Have to Happen. Slow Down!”

In 2022, 4,194 motorcycle riders died in road traffic crashes, according to data from the Colombia National Road Safety Observatory. That number increased by 13% from January to June 2023 over the same period in 2022, with 2,502 deaths. Most of the motorcyclists who die in the country are men between ages 20 and 34.

Speeding is the main cause of these crashes, increasing both the chance of a crash and its severity. According to data gathered by the Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit, 57% of motorcyclists in Bogotá and 53% in Cali drive over the established speed limits.

In Colombia, Vital Strategies has guided the development of 15 campaigns since 2015. In August 2023, NRSA and the Secretariats of Mobility from Bogota and Cali joined to launch a national mass media campaign, coordinated with enhanced enforcement, to curb speeding. Vital Strategies provided technical and financial support to this campaign as part of its work with the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety.

“It didn’t have to happen” focuses on the heartbreak of six families who shared their powerful and painful stories of losing loved ones due to speeding. Each testimonial entreated motorcycle riders to slow down and detailed the especially acute pain of knowing that their loved one’s death could have been prevented. The goal was to expose the speeding that happens throughout the country, flag speeding as a public health issue, and make people understand the devastating consequences of speeding so that they would stay within posted limits. The campaign also strove to change social norms by portraying speeding as deviant behavior.

The campaign aired for eight weeks on TV and radio, and on the internet, and was shown widely on billboards and bus-station posters. It was designed to make motorcyclists think about the terrible consequences that a traffic crash could bring for them and their loved ones and convey to drivers that they are not immune. All stories repeated the same refrain: These deaths didn’t have to happen. Slow down! Your families want you to get home safely.

Vital Strategies worked closely with NRSA to interview 48 motorcyclists and extensively tested campaign materials to make sure that their plea to slow down was strong enough to motivate riders. The video spots featured an original song created for the campaign that was infused with palpable grief, longing and regret that Colombians found powerful and emotive. These interviews as well as focus-group message testing revealed the importance of highlighting a death’s effect on the family, and the slogan “Your families are waiting for you” grew out of that finding.

The campaign also highlighted the fact that regardless of whose fault a crash is, motorcyclists and pedestrians are the most vulnerable users because they do not have the protection of being inside a car or truck.

The families in the campaign invited the world in to witness their grief on an intimate level.

Tatiana, 36, was coping with raising a son on her own. Olmeda suffered more than one loss regarding his son — Francisco died in 2015, eight years after a motorcycle crash left him using a wheelchair.

Olivia, too, has been unable to fathom burying one of her children. A part of her also died, she tells viewers as she strokes a photo of the young man. The same holds true for Eucaris regarding 29-year-old Santiago, whose passion for motorcycles proved his undoing, says his devastated mother in another testimonial.

Elicenia was pregnant when her husband, Victor, was killed in a motorcycle road crash. The fact that their son never got to meet his father pierces her with incurable pain.

Julián was a standout cyclist well known throughout Colombia as an up-and-coming pro with dreams of someday winning the Tour de France. Instead, he is gone, and his mother, Fernanda, has become a standard-bearer for the struggle to slow down in the country. Colombia has mourned the death of this 12-year-old boy, and Fernanda’s testimony was designed to touch the hearts of all drivers and invite them to slow down.

Following the campaign, we interviewed car and motorcycle drivers aged 18-55 in five key Colombian cities where the majority of crashes occur.

The evaluation demonstrated that the campaign had generated the intended concern about speeding and motivated respondents to comply with speed limits. A full 98% of respondents who recalled the campaign said this ad made them understand the consequences of speeding, 95% said it motivated them to follow the posted speed limits, and 93% agreed that it raised their concern about speeding.

A good 96%, of drivers who saw the campaign found it relevant to them. Respondents who recalled the ad reported higher risk perception of speeding: 98% of those who were aware of the campaign agreed that the higher the speed, the greater the chance of a crash, as opposed to 86% of respondents who were unaware of the campaign. More than half of campaign-aware respondents reported that local people were against driving above speed limits (with a significant difference from those who did not recall the campaign), suggesting that social norms about speeding may be changing.

The campaign also generated public discourse. Among those who remembered the campaign, 42% had spoken with someone close to them about speeding in the previous two months, while just 30% of those who did not remember seeing the ad spoke to their loved ones about speeding.

Those exposed to the campaign were more likely to view speeding as risky. It increased their awareness of police enforcement and helped them reframe speeding as deviant behavior—ultimately reducing crashes and saving lives.

In line with the World Health Organization and other organizations involved in road safety work, Vital Strategies does not use the word accident to refer to a traffic collision or crash, as it suggests no one was responsible and that it wasn’t preventable.

We also do not use the term drunk driving, because people don’t have to be technically or visibly drunk to be impaired. The terms drink driving or drinking and driving can be used instead.