"Shadow on the Road" is an educational role-playing game that will teach you the basics of road safety by spending a fun time in the company of other players. It is a collaborative role play complemented by an informative web about Road Safety.
The ideas
Are adolescents and young people aware of the risk behaviors and responsible behaviors for road safety education? And if so, why don't they do the latter? Why do they assume such risk behaviors as pedestrians, cyclists or companions?
Our hypothesis is that young people can have a deep knowledge and understanding of their actions and behaviors as road users but they think the road accidents won’t affect them and therefore they don’t find necessary to learn and reflect more on their responsibilities in road safety.
Young people who commit infractions causing serious accidents know traffic rules and the consequences of accidents, this is not a lack of knowledge or information. Why does this happen? Why drivers of non-motorized vehicles, passengers and often pedestrians act irresponsibly? Why are not road signs and regulations respected? Possibly the answer lies in the values (or the lack of them) that are behind those behaviors: competition, hedonism, selfishness and individualism. We believe it’s necessary to incorporate in Road education an ethical-moral dimension that strengthens the civic sense and the social and personal responsibility.
Research, analysis of the problem.
We have searched for statistical data on accidents and the most frequent causes of accidents among young people. Then we interviewed some students to know how they perceived road safety. With this information, we created an online survey with 7 questions in which we intended to assess the young people level of awareness of road safety, the risks they assume as passengers, the knowledge of basic rules of road safety, their perception of risks assumed by youth and their perception of their parents regarding the accomplishment of the road safety norms. The survey was answered by 85 students, in an anonymous way. The results of the survey showed us important information:
- Although most students always wear a seat belt, there is a significant group (17.6%) that do not have it automated or even 1.2% that do not use it for short distances.
- Almost 73% of respondents acknowledge that they do not always cross roads and urban roads correctly using traffic lights or zebra crossing.
- A very high percentage of students, 42.2%, observe behaviors of not respecting the rules of road safety in parents in the presence of their children. It is striking that 31% consider that safety belts are not put on and 20% reported that people occupy places in the vehicle that do not correspond, which implies that the parents or adults with whom they go as passengers do not meet safety standards.
- The vast majority of respondents has not traveled, nor would travel, with a drunk driver. 18% answered affirmatively and we consider that, although it is not very high, it is significant. Curiously, it coincides with the percentage that the DGT says is that of drivers who drive under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
- Regarding Road Safety on bicycle, we observe that only 7.7% respect road safety regulations.
The initiatives
In order to teach the basics of road safety education and educate on important citizenship values, we designed "Shadow on the Road", a card game of collaborative roles, in which safe and responsible behaviors are learnt with values like respect, cooperation, prudence , solidarity or companionship.
The name of the game refers to the character "webmaster" and that symbolizes the accident and that has the objective that the players do not reach their destination. For this, he has a deck of cards with behaviors, actions and risk situations. "Shadow of the Road" confronts the other "vehicle" role players who have to pass the "Road Shadow" tests and have the "Vehicle Charts" deck in their favor with behaviors, actions and situations of prevention, help and collaboration.
The game is recommended for players 15 years old or older, although it is enough to be keen to have fun learning the elementary rules of Road Safety. To play 'Shadow on the road' it is necessary to have the cards belonging to the game, paper, pen and three to five players. The game consists of a deck of cards, a board and game rules:
- Character / role cards: four vehicles + Shadow of the Road
- 40 Vehicle cards
- 55 Shadow Cards
Preparation: The five players must be placed in a circle with the two decks (mallet of shadow and mallet of vehicles) in the center of the board, along with paper and pen. Each player will be dealt a character card at random, leaving it uncovered and next to the player. Once the character cards are shown each player 'vehicle' draws 2 cards and the player who has 'The shadow of the road' will draw 3 cards. It ends when all the players arrive safely at the end of the game.
This game was played in class by the students of 4th ESO and with more than 600 players. We published it in the teacher's blog and social networks.
We wanted to make possible that everyone could play this game and therefore we created a website with information and the full game for free. It's only necessary to download the cards, the rules, the game board, to print, cut and start playing! here.
