In France, and particularly in Paris and its suburbs, pedestrians are disobedient towards road safety rules. In the past year, ± 4500 persons were injured or killed due to imprudent behavior. The Parisian Road Safety Authority wanted to raise awareness about the danger of being a careless pedestrian, in order to make this terribly large figure decrease.

A specially designed interactive digital billboard was consecutively displayed near busy pedestrian crossings all

over the Paris area. Equipped with a movement detector, speaker, and camera, the smart billboard made the

sound of squealing tires whenever a pedestrian attempted to cross the road while the “red man” (no crossing sign)

was on. The frightened faces of the disobedient pedestrians were projected directly onto the billboard and shown

alongside the caption: “Don’t risk looking death in the face. Check the lights and cross safely”. QR Codes on the

billboard led the pedestrians to video messages of real crash survivors. They could then pledge not to cross on red

light anymore and contribute their picture to the campaign. The billboards of this campaign are the instant

transformation of consumer-generated images; into personalized digital billboards.

Starting on March 22nd, we held an unprecedented field operation in Paris. A specially designed interactive digital billboard was consecutively displayed near busy pedestrian crossings all over the Paris area. Equipped with a motion detector, speaker, and camera, the smart billboard made the sound of squealing tires whenever a pedestrian attempted to cross the road while the Red Man (no crossing sign) was on. The frightened faces of disobedient pedestrians were projected directly onto the billboard and shown alongside the caption: Don’t risk looking death in the face. Check the lights and cross safely.

QR Codes on the Billboard led to video messages of real crash survivors. Pedestrians could then take a pledge not to cross on red light anymore and contribute their picture to the campaign. We used the pictures of the frightened faces as posters created under real-life conditions and used the film as an online awareness-raising tool.