TREVISO. I had my first accident when I was sixteen, on a blue Piaggio boxer: a lady hit me on a busy road near a racecourse, I was wrong because I had treacherously come out of a stop sign. The last accident was a few years ago: a rear-end collision on the motorway, I was right there but only by chance.
In between there were others: neither many nor few, just a normal and dangerous number. Mistakes and bullshit, distractions and prowess, my and others’ bad luck blows, right or even desperate moves, to avoid the worst. In some cases I can say that I am alive by a miracle. In other cases I can say that it could have been better, I was just one who passed by there at a crossroads with another destiny. Here: I am a normal road user, an average one.
To the boys and girls who read this article, I would simply say one thing: the road is democratic and not always meritocratic. No one is flawless, everyone has done something wrong in life, has caused damage or risked causing it. There is no podium from which to speak: we are all at stake. Nobody just teaches, everyone must also learn. It is so.
The Tribuna today opens a campaign on road safety. We called her Write when you arrive because it seemed a nice phrase to us, which summarizes a position of affection and care towards those who set out on a journey. It is not necessarily the phrase of the mother to the children, it is not necessarily an adult thing towards the children. Write when you arrive: we say it to those we care about, to the person we fall in love with, to a friend.
Is the campaign reserved for young people? Yes and no: we will propose it for all readers; and in our newspaper, readers are of all ages. But it is true that we want to turn to high schools, with the help of managers, teachers and above all the Province of Treviso, of which we are partners in this great attempt at awareness.
What are we going to talk about?
We turn on the satellite navigator of the journalistic trip that we are planning, to indicate, in broad terms, what our path will be. Week after week we will try to present the themes that seem most incisive to us. And often, in an information campaign, the themes are expressed through questions.
So, here are some question marks. How do you get out of trouble if you make a mistake while driving? How much (and how) do we talk about driving in families? How did we prepare for the summer of the Great Reopenings, with clubs, beaches and concerts potentially crowded?
Then: space for service information, space for the painful story of those who have lost a friend or family member on a road, space for those who have made it and those who remain marked by an error.
Video. Marcon presents the road safety campaign with the Tribuna
We will deepen decisive, delicate and dangerous relationships, directives for the topic that is important to us. Like the relationship between alcohol and road safety. Or how the relationship between driving and technology: today we drive more and more intelligent cars, they are four-wheeled computers.
Cars full of digital opportunities and software, tools that can help behavior on the road, can prevent hazards and provide valuable information; but these contemporary endowments also represent distractions, which come in straight-legged while we are behind the wheel, in the form of audio (and video as well). We really like being multitasking in life, in short, being able to do more things together. But, if you drive a moving car, mixing behaviors can trigger consequences.
What we want to do is not a solitary excursion. We will have travel companions: a great road safety expert and then school interlocutors, public administratorsall the subjects who in some way can interface with the contents that may interest us and our readers.
It will not be a didactic approach, we have no lessons to teach. And – we swear by every inch of the way we go – we won’t climb any pedestals. It will not be a symposium, it will be an open and never vertical confrontation: safety concerns us allit commits us all because we all make mistakes and we can all learn.
Anyone who has the desire or intention to bring a suggestion, an opinion, a testimony or a criticism, will have citizenship on these pages, on our site, on our social networks. And this invitation is not unrealistic; we don’t write it like that, just to say. We mean it seriously. Test us. –
*Director of the Treviso Tribune
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How and where to follow us
It is impossible to launch a campaign aimed at young people without having a precise strategy … to reach them, wherever they are. At school, maybe. Or the places of nightlife. But also – and perhaps above all – on the web: that’s where, let’s face it, we spend a good part of our days, a little bit of everyone. We will decline our project with an overall editorial philosophy, but with the added value of managing the contents in a different way according to the platforms.
There will be this path on paper, of course. But there will also be ad hoc materials packaged for the site and for social networks, starting with Instagram – here you will find our profile – which is the one most loved by the generation we address. We will produce video pills, young instagramers and influencers are already hard at work talking to their peers. Follow us on the site, on facebook, on instagram and remember the hashtag: #write when you arrive