Cost benefit study of a safety campaign's impact on road safety

The aim of this paper is to identify a break in the development trend of the time series of the number of fatal, light and heavy injuries in traffic accidents and compare the progress caused by the media campaign named "Think or you'll pay! "in the Czech Republic over the period 2000-2015. The campaign focuses on the age group of drivers under the age of 25 and the most common cause of their traffic accidents as the drivers in this age category are the most vulnerable group in road traffic. The campaign uses a method in which it tries to influence behaviour by negative action, or by causing negative emotions. The authors concentrate on the effects of mass media campaigns in the long-term development of accidents in the Czech Republic and a financial evaluation of the road safety campaign "Think or you'll pay! "by comparing the campaign costs, the cost of road fatalities, and the cost savings from the perspective of government expenditures. The secondary source data for the chart analysis and interpolation according to the criteria of analytical and mechanical balancing time series, the Chow test and Quandt Likelihood Ratio test, choosing the appropriate model trend of accidents and consequences of traffic accidents were obtained from the Czech Ministry of Transport, the database of The Losses due to Traffic Accident Rates (CZRSO) and the Czech Association of Victims of Traffic Accidents (CSODN, 2015) from period of 1990 till 2016. The impact of the media campaign "Think or you'll pay!", measured by enumerating the costs was compared with the number of fatalities in the years immediately after the campaign and the impact of the media campaign was evaluated and recognised. The conclusion and the highlights summarize the findings of research and the limits of media campaign evaluation approach.