Arrive Alive Online Report 2014

The Road Safety Reality of South Africa is that the vehicle population has increased to 11 million registered vehicles and the 2014-2015 Festive Season road deaths are at 1368 reported fatalities. There is a clear understanding in the traffic environment that road carnage cannot continue and that more needs to be done towards ensuring the safety of all road users!

This cannot be done merely by Government and traffic officials but will require cooperation with the private sector, NGO’s, community activists and private citizens. The Arrive Alive online initiative is only one such initiative, based on a passionate personal commitment towards road safety, striving to create more awareness and encourage a wide audience towards safer behaviour on our roads.

The development of the Arrive Alive website is focused on Education and Encouragement towards Road Safety.

The Arrive Alive website was an important portal to initiate discussion about road safety in 2014.

Through close cooperation and a committed effort to assist the printed and other media road safety information was shared across a variety of platforms.

The Arrive Alive Website and related Road Safety Initiatives Overview 2014 will provide a detailed overview of:

Road Safety has been an important topic in the news in 2014. Media included road crash reports as well as the responses to crashes, activities in enforcement and the addresses and messages from leaders in Government and the road safety environment. We shared a large number of these stories in the following categories:

The new "content pages" created and edited/refreshed on the Arrive Alive road safety website totaled 108 pages.
This includes some of the following titles:

The best tool to analyse traff flw and visitor numbers is the technology offred through Google Analytics. We would like to share the website traff as measured by Google Analytics from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2014

To reach a much wider audience for road safety it is important to reach those who are active in the social media environment. Not only is it important to share sections of content and road safety links, but also to share info on the road safety initiatives by our road safety partners. The ArriveAlive.co.za website is active on our own platforms on both Facebook and Twitter: As on the 1st of January 2014:

We placed much more focus on the messages via the growing Twitter audience and signifiantly increased the following to beyond 41,000 followers. We would like to acknowledge the close cooperation with other media platforms as well as “purpose & cause driven” initiatives such as Crime Line and Lead SA The Twitter Analytics Tool provides a fascinating look at the reach attained during this past December:

We are also administrators on 2 larger platforms, allowing us to share news content and media releases with a much wider audience:

Proudly South Africa: Facebook Fans 56,857

Rugby15: Facebook Fans 69,179 Twitter Followers: 69,400

We have been privileged to use a wide range of platforms to create awareness. During 2014 this included:

Delivering a presentation on road safety at Transport Forum at Sasol
Attending several conferences & liaising with others in the road safety environment
Helping to facilitate events such as the Eskom Easter Vehicle safety campaign
Operating emergency rescue equipment at a road safety launch with Life Rosepark Hospital, Bloemfontein
Creating a new “Look and Feel” with the re-development of the Road Safety and Accident Blogs

It is important that we reach a far wider audience than those with access to the internet. The Arrive Alive online road safety initiatives are also aimed at journalists, reporters, researchers and teachers who are able to gather the road safety information
and distribute to a wider audience.

We would like to focus on some of these other media that distributed the road safety information from the Arrive Alive website and recognized this. We have assisted these platforms in providing info, answering requests for information etc.

To be not only an effctive information portal, but also a mechanism for greater public involvement, we have developed sections to enhance greater public interaction. An often overlooked, yet very important objective is to assist the public in gaining clarity on road safety matters and provide responses to queries raised via the Arrive Alive website, blogs and other platforms. It is also of extreme importance to assist private companies with advice and information to be used in their own on-site road safety campaigns, internal communications etc.

Herewith fid a detailed summary of how public interaction was facilitated during 2014:

It has become more important to cooperate and collaborate in other initiatives as well. In a tough fiancial environment where NGO’s and small business struggle it has become vital for the survival of this road safety initiative to develop new platforms and to assist others with expertise and consulting services.

The hours of hard work and dedication that goes into these effrts are most often not fully understood and appreciated, and we would like to provide an overview to summarize the effrt which has gone into these collaborations during 2014.

We also partner in the development of an online initiative to create awareness of safety in the mining industry. This was inspired by past cooperation with and assistance to mining companies in their own road safety campaigns.

It was our vision that the Arrive Alive website can make a signifiant contribution to not only safety on our roads -but also to the safety in the Mining Industry!

Today we can reflct on both hard work and many successes in this partnership.

It is now 11 years since we started working on the Arrive Alive website – launched on the 13th of March 2003 .

The website is a personal commitment towards creating road safety awareness in memory of a mother who died in a road traff crash on the 3rd of December 1972.

Arrive Alive is a road safety strategy started by the Department of Transport in the late 1990’s.

The Website received a Letter of Endorsement from The Department of Transport in 2007.

The development team consists of 1 full time and 2 “part time” developers.

The Arrive Alive website and online initiatives are not funded by the Department of Transport or the Road Traff Management Corporation.

There is no marketing budget for these online road safety initiatives and it is funded through cooperation with the private sector.

We will continue to commit ourselves to these road safety effrts. There is so much more we can achieve with the participation of both corporate South Africa and individuals. We recognize that there are much expertise and knowledge to be gathered in strengthening these effrts.

We would like to invite others to become part of the road safety initiatives. This could include:

- Becoming an Arrive Alive Website partner

We will discuss with such partner how such partnering contribution can be used to develop new sections of content. The partner will be provided with exposure of such a partnership by way of:

• Exposure to logos
• Sections of Content
• Horizontal and other banners/ graphics
• Blog Posts and media exposure on the road safety initiatives and corporate social corporate responsibility initiatives of the Partner

- Advisor and Consulting Services

Every person can contribute to road safety irrespective of age, gender or fiancial status. We would like to invite the public to contribute by sending advice and recommendations on how to achieve greater road safety in South Africa. We welcome any suggestions on new content or additional means of creating awareness that should be pursued.