City to continue testing some graphic road safety ads after pulling ‘jaywalking’ ads

Despite pulling its controversial ‘jaywalking’ test advertisements for its upcoming road safety campaign, the remainder of the city’s graphic test ads will continue to run until next week.

In his most recent memo to Ottawa City Council, Public Works Department general manager Alain Gonthier said the ads will be in active testing on Snapchat and Meta platforms until Wednesday, September 20.

Gonthier said the testing will allow his department to continue gathering online performance metrics, which will guide the next steps in creative development for the campaign.

“The online performance metrics, together with the feedback received to date will guide the next steps in creative development, including additional offline testing prior to launching the campaign.

The city pulled jaywalking advertisements from testing over the weekend after councillors and the public criticized the graphic nature of the ads and its messaging.

One of the ads featured an image of a bloodied pedestrian lying on the ground, with the caption, “You jaywalked to save time. But you lost it. Forever. Cross only where it is safe.”

“Ultimately, the goal of this campaign is to bring every road user’s individual responsibilities in safely sharing the road to the forefront of public discourse,” Gonthier said.

Members of council will be invited to offer comments before the ad campaign is officially launched.

 

Statistics provided by Gonthier stated 25 per cent of all fatal and major injury collisions on Ottawa’s roads involve pedestrians. The memo gave data on collisions between 2017 and 2021 on Ottawa roads:

•  29 per cent of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian was crossing a road midblock (away from an intersection)
•  23 per cent of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian with the right-of-way was struck at an intersection by a left turning driver
•  11 per cent of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian who did not have the right-of-way was struck by a vehicle travelling straight through an intersection