Barcelona City Council started an unprecedented public awareness campaign today to appeal to people’s individual responsibility in preventing road accidents. Rather than accidents, the language in the campaign is geared towards collisions and other occurrences which in most cases are the result of personal infringements which can be avoided.

The audio-visual campaign is designed to raise awareness about the main causes of accidents in Barcelona and their consequences (for individuals and families). The City Police have selected cases of real accidents in the city (with no fatalities), to offer an example of attitudes which led to accidents and which could have been avoided.

The resulting campaign has eight audio-visuals covering the most common types of accidents, to be disseminated consecutively from today on municipal digital channels. The victims’ associations STOP Accidents and P(A)T took part in one of the videos.

Showing real images, in a hard-hitting yet educational manner, helps attract people’s attention and appeals directly to their individual responsibility in relation to accidents and their consequences. These types of city images are often also not shown as much to citizens.

The videos will complement the everyday educational and awareness work carried out by the City Police, such as training sessions for company staff who move around the city, workshops at city schools and campaigns with advice for the elderly.

The campaign started with the presentation of the balance of accidents for 2020. Last year saw the City Police attend 5,715 accidents with victims in the city, a reduction of 38.26% compared to the previous year (mobility restrictions due to the state of alarm should be taken into account). Traffic accidents accounted for 14 deaths and 141 serious injuries.