Watch Tom Flood’s “Results Not Accidents: Reframining and Rehumanizing Road Safety”
The “Roadways for a Safer Future” lecture series aims to broaden understanding of transportation safety as a “systems” issue, and learn how to leverage that system to improve safety, equity, and mobility outcomes for all people. In 2021, we have explored various ways observational data are used to inform—and sometimes misinform—road safety initiatives at the local and state levels. We have also reflected on the gaps between what we know about road safety and decision-making in policy and practice, circling around a fundamental question: why do we keep building and operating a system that allows for 40,000 deaths—and untold more life-altering injuries—every year?
The lecture series is organized by Tab Combs, Seth LaJeunesse, and Wesley Kumfer and offered through the University of North Carolina’s Department of City and Regional Planning with support from the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety.
Roadways for a Safer Future 2021 Keynote Lecture
“Results Not Accidents: Reframing and Rehumanizing Road Safety“
Speaker: Tom Flood | Nov 4, 2021
In the keynote lecture for the 2021 “Roadways for a Safer Future” lecture series, Tom Flood challenged dominant engineering, enforcement, and auto-centric communication narratives, and shared insights on how to use storytelling to shift the focus away from victim blaming and toward a human-centered transportation system.
Tom is a storyteller, communications wizard, and parent. Tom worked in advertising for many years, including creating advertising content for the automobile industry. These days, he pours his creativity and passion into consulting and developing messaging to help change how we think about roads—specifically, who gets to use them, and how. In this talk, Tom shared insights on how we can use storytelling to shift the focus of road safety away from victim blaming and toward a human-centered transportation system. His work showed in in stark, heartwrenching terms how the transportation system we’ve designed—and its potentially tragic consequences for so many road users—is the result of intentional actions. We’ve chosen, bit by bit, to build a transportation system that prioritizes speed and power at the expense of safety, especially for people walking and biking. But, as Tom points out, we can choose to change this paradigm. We were thrilled to have him speak to us on how he uses his communications background and gift of storytelling to help motivate this change.
A brief, edited recording of Tom’s talk, “Results Not Accidents: Reframing and Rehumanizing Road Safety,” is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBsjQXh04Q0. For more information about Tom’s work, please check out his website, creativebyrovelo.com, and follow him on Twitter at @tomflood1.
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