Students discovered three different problems and dangers of driving in China, and came up with solutions to inform Chinese drivers. In order to teach Chinese drivers thoroughly, the students created the video in Chinese with English subtitles.
The ideas
Initial brainstorming session: We created a mind map that consisted of our ideas about the road safety problems in China. It included: road rage, parking issues and buying licenses illegally. All of the problems we thought about are present in China.
Solutions to problems: Initial brainstorming activity. We brainstormed by creating a second mind map. This mind map consisted of solutions to road safety problems in China such as: road layout, acquisition of licenses, and stricter law enforcement. All of these are serious issues in China.
Documentary Outline: part 1 - We started making the outline and a basic structure for our documentary. The basic structure included: Intro, Facts about Qingdao, China, Problems with road safety and Solutions to the problems. ‘Problems’ included information about lack of awareness of the law, road infrastructure risks and how they may cause danger. (For specific details, we have attached some Word documents which include all of our research.)
From the research, we came up with some conclusions and solutions:
Laws
1. Seminars and workshop for awareness of China’s traffic laws
2. Enforcement of Chinese driving license tests
3. More police and CCTVs
Infrastructure:
1. Traffic cones replace by fences
2. Speed limit signs
3. Narrow roads should only be used by people or bicycles
Civility:
1. Lectures, books
2. Media articles about driving respect
3. More usage of parking lots
With these conclusions, we thought that there are simple changes that could have a great impact everywhere.
Documentary Outline: part 2 - We started making the outline and a structure for the Problems chapter of our road safety documentary. We divided the problems into three parts: Laws, Risks and Respect. (For Further Details, please refer to the Image Sections).
The initiatives
To develop our ideas into initiatives, we took our project and questions out to the street. To do this, we went out and asked members of the community a series of questions:
Do you have a driving license?
How many trials did it take you to get the license?
Did you ever have an accident? Number of accidents? What was the cause? How long did it take for the accident to be processed?
Do you think the roads in China are safe?
Do you have any solutions for these problems?
Do you have any expectations/hopes for the roads?
All of the questions were aimed at addressing at least some of the problems we thought of in our ideas section. The interviews were used in our final product, our documentary, which is aimed at the wider community in China and looks at how the issues of road safety should be addressed. Our aim was to raise awareness about the problems of road safety in China and the possible solutions that the wider community and the local government could implement to improve the current state of the roads in China, as far was safety is concerned. The questions we asked were not only used in our research, but were also used to carry out our investigation into solutions that could be adapted into the system.
Once the editing was finished, we took our video and showed it to the community. We made a tally of reactions to our message when showing our video to our friends and family members as well as teachers and other members of the public. We judged their reactions, categorizing them into a table in order to assess the success of our project. By the reactions we got, we think we did a good job at spreading our message. It is good to note that some people already held the opinion that the driving situation in China is bad, but some people also had a change of heart or never realized the extent of problem. This defiantly shows that our product succeeded in conveying the message we tried to stress through our short documentary.
