Final Reader Response

In the article “Floor lights help 'smartphone zombies' keep eye on the road”, Tan (2017) reported that the Land Transport Authority (LTA) will be testing out a new road-crossing feature at two locations, Buyong Road and Orchard Road. This feature involves fixing LED strips onto pavements at the start and end of the pedestrian crossings. These strips will imitate signals of the traffic lights and can be seen even during the day. According to Tan’s (2017) interview with Gopinath Meno (2017) “Floor lights help 'smartphone zombies' keep eye on the road”, Nanyang technological University senior research fellow, stated that the installation of the floor lights would enhanced safety of those who are constantly looking at their smartphones as they are unaware of the road condition.


While this initiative aims to make pedestrian become aware of road safety, more publicity will be needed to educate pedestrian about this initiative. Furthermore, I feel that safety should be our own responsibility and by publicise this, it should be more effective than implementing the new road-crossing feature.


More publicity will be required for this project as just by installing the LED light strips without educating pedestrian about the uses of it, ‘it's like doing something without letting other people know what is the intention of you doing’. Hence, pedestrian might think that that the LED light strips are just decorations and will not pay any attention to it. Therefore, through more publicity and educating about uses of this initiative to the pedestrian, pedestrian will then start to notice the LED strips.


There are generally two types of publicity- offline and online publicity. Offline publicity are methods done without using internet, such examples are newspaper, television, radio and so on. While online publicity are methods done through any internet-based platform, such examples are Facebook, blogs, website and so on. Different method should be adopted to target different target audience. For the youths and working adults, online publicity can be used to publicise the new road-safety feature and for the elderly, offline methods such as newspaper, talks can be used to publicise the feature, 


Over the years, Singapore has launched many campaigns to raise safety awareness in the country. Some examples of campaigns include ‘Safety start with me 2015’, which showcase primary and secondary school student’s ideas on how to be safe through them submitting posters, story writing, photography and so on. ‘Safety First with Ken and Friends’, is an online e-learning module targeted upper primary and secondary school’s which students can interact with ‘ken’ and his friends on topics such safety at home, traffic safety and so on. ‘National WSH Campaign Launch and Family Carnival’, which was an event that showcased various exhibits relating to safety and health at work.


Not only campaigns, safety videos have been made and broadcast regularly on television and on the internet - ‘YouTube’ by Workplace Safety and Health Council (WSHC). The YouTube account created by WSHC has only a total number of 3,011 subscribers and a total number of 1,624,006 views over the cause of 10 years.


Despite having so many campaigns launched and safety videos, not much improvement has been made as in the article “Floor lights help 'smartphone zombies' keep eye on the road”, Tan (2017), the author stated that “Last year, the figure rose by 5.4 per cent from 2015 to hit a four-year high of 1,030”.


In conclusion, I feel that WSHC can collaborate with some local popular YouTube channel to create more awareness of safety. An example of a popular one and had collaborated with WSHC is the ‘Night Owl Cinematics’ (NOC) with a total number of 616,139 subscribers and a total number 178,688,702 views for the cause of 6 years. 2 videos with casts from NOC has been created by and posted on WSHC channel about 2 years ago. However, there was only a total number of about 2,700 views for both videos. Therefore, this time round, if the safety video is to be posted on NOC channels, more people will know about the important of safety and will be more careful in the future.




References

TAN, C. (2017). Floor lights help 'smartphone zombies' keep eye on the road. [online] The Straits Times. Available at: http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/floor-lights-help-smartphone-zombies-keep-eye-on-the-road [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017].


WorkSafeMT. (2017). The Importance of Safety - WorkSafeMT. [online] Available at: http://www.worksafemt.com/safety/safety-important/the-importance-of-safety/ [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017].
WSHC. (2017). National Campaigns. [online] Wshc.sg. Available at: https://www.wshc.sg/ [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017].

The Balance. (2017). Publicity and Why Is It Important?. [online] Available at: https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-publicity-2295550 [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017].

YouTube. (2017). Workplace Safety and Health Council. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/ShineAtWork/featured [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017].

YouTube. (2017). Ryan Sylvia. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/Alozerk/featured [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017].

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