Client
Office
Each year in WA there are more than 400 incidents of children locked in cars, putting them at extreme risk due to the rapid rise of temperature inside, especially in the blazing Australian sun.
RAC patrols are often first responders in these situations and know first-hand how devastatingly upsetting it is for parents and how dangerously life-threatening it is for the child. Moreover, as cars become more and more theft-proof, getting them out quickly is getting harder and harder.
We felt strongly that if we wanted to change the outcome, we needed a solution that put behavioural change at its heart. We discovered that the most common cases of kids locked in cars are related to ‘smart’ car security - such as automatic locking technology. This security feature means that parents can suddenly find their child trapped alone, after only momentarily leaving their keys inside, in a bag or with their child to play with. This wasn’t a matter of inattentive parents, but an unintended side effect of modern technology.
The solution was less about the parent and child, it was about the parent and their car keys. Our strategy was to ensure that one simple behaviour was followed – to keep your keys on you at all times when out of the vehicle.
We developed an innovative design solution to prompt real behavioural change at the heart of the problem – WA car parks.
Called ‘Key Lines’ the design replaces traditional car park lines with a timely reminder - a durable, aluminium decal featuring a row of keys and a message for drivers to ‘Keep Your Keys on You’. Over summer, ‘Key Lines’ were installed at Lakeside Joondalup, one of the largest carparks in WA, as well as Claremont Quarter shopping centres in suburban Perth.
To build awareness, and further educate people on the dangers of this issue at a mass level, we also developed a supporting campaign which ran across radio, TV, digital, press, OOH and social, again reminding every WA driver to ‘Keep Your Keys on You’.
The campaign is continuing, but early behavioural results showed a significant drop in kids locked in cars. RAC plans to expand the initiative this summer, by installing the Key Lines in metro areas.
