Anyone logging into the Belgian platform Just-on-web from Monday onward to pay a speeding fine will receive testimonials from mothers of children killed in accidents, alongside the federal speeding violation notices. In addition, the federal letters on speeding violations include cards with personal messages from witnesses. 

That is the core of a new road safety campaign launched on Monday in the presence of Justice Minister Annelies Verlinden (CD&V). At the heart of the campaign are the stories of two mothers who lost their child in an accident caused by a speeding driver. 

Consequences of drivers’ behavior

The aim is to confront drivers with the consequences of their behavior. The initiative is a collaboration between the non-profit organization Ouders van Verongelukte Kinderen-SAVE, the federal police, the road safety institute Vias, and the federal public services for Justice and Mobility.

Verlinden emphasizes that the campaign is intended to ensure people get home safe and sound. “Every violation we prevent, every behavior change we achieve, can save a life,” she added.

Even those who receive their fine in the mailbox also get a personal letter from the mothers. “Our message can be confrontational, but sometimes confrontation is necessary to make someone think and to bring about change,” say the mothers of children who died in accidents.

Not a new idea

Verlinden’s campaign is not a completely new idea, however. It is the latest step in a Belgian experiment that has been developing for years, and Belgium now has one of the more direct approaches: confronting an identified offender at the exact moment they receive or pay the fine.

In 2017, OVK-SAVE, Federal Highway Police, and Happiness Brussels launched SpeedTalk. Drivers caught speeding during police controls were invited to talk directly to parents who had lost a child in a speed-related crash.

Since 2019, some Belgian traffic fines have been accompanied by so-called ‘sensibiliseringsfiches’ that explain the risks of speeding, alcohol use, distraction, seat belts, etc. Vias subsequently evaluated those sheets and discussed the results with the authorities in September 2022.

After that, Vias explicitly examined video messages, drawing on scientific literature and “existing practices in Belgium and abroad.” The proposed channel was precisely the website where offenders pay their fines.

In Australia, the Transport Accident Commission launched a similar campaign in 2023 with Victoria Police and the state’s justice department. It targeted people who had actually been caught speeding, running red lights, or using a phone illegally. Their infringement notice included a personal letter from a first responder and a QR code linking to an emotional video from a crash survivor or responder, tailored to the offense.

The question remains: do such campaigns actually work?

The federal government says the first Just-on-web victim videos were viewed 1.2 million times during their first year. That’s impressive exposure, but 1.2 million views is not evidence that the recipients subsequently drove more slowly.

A particularly relevant Belgian study by Hasselt University examined 1,362 secondary-school students exposed to road-victim testimonials. It found relatively positive effects immediately and two months later on most measured socio-cognitive and self-reported behavioral variables.

But the effects differed substantially by demographic group, prior attitudes, and how emotionally or cognitively affected participants were. And importantly, these were students, not convicted speeders, and the study did not measure subsequent speeding fines or accidents.

Emotion alone is not enough

There is an important warning too: emotion alone isn’t enough. A meta-analysis of 13 experimental studies involving more than 3,000 people found that fear-based road-safety messages were very effective at frightening people. Still, it produced no statistically significant improvement in driving behavior. So “make the offender feel terrible” is not itself an evidence-based solution.

So, Belgium is turning the speeding fine itself into a behavioral intervention, but whether emotion can prevent the next offense remains unproven.