Texting and driving is still prevalent throughout the world and a major cause of road deaths. That’s why there are still numerous road safety PSA campaigns on the subject. Unfortunately, data shows that these ‘don’t text and drive’-campaigns no longer have the impact needed to change really our behaviour. In order to change that the organization Parents of Road Victims asked us to come with a radical new take in preventing texting and driving.

BlindMeters.com, a first of its kind platform that gives everybody concrete insight in how many meters they exactly miss when texting and driving. BlindMeters.com is geo-located and turns Google Maps into a text editor, allowing you to type on any road. A custom-made font connects to the speed limitation data of the specific road you’re typing on and stretches to the exact number of meters you miss when texting and driving.

To do so we programmed an algorithm that connects different databases and layers them onto one website, together with a specially designed font made for the purpose of dynamically stretch.

Data shows that people have become immune to ‘don’t text and drive’ road safety campaigns. So, we had to make a very broad impact on all Belgian drivers, but with specific attention to the young crowd, since they not only text but also use WhatsApp, Instagram and all other channels while driving. The strategy was simple: intrigue and incite to go to the platform via broad media – TV and Cinema – and Press coverage. And create direct traffic to the BlindMeters.com via a digital connectivity plan and the power of social media.

The heart of the BlindMeters.com platform is data. The algorithm uses different sources and layers them onto one website. First step was to find all those sources and use Google Maps as the main ‘visual source’ since the esthetics of the Google satellite images are most beautiful. Other data-sources allowed us to use the geometry data of the roads and the speed limits. Yet another data-sourced allowed us to type and render texts along roads on top of satellite images. And finally we create a unique way to visualize the data with a custom-designed font made with the purpose of being able to dynamically stretch to the exact number of meters you miss while texting and driving.

Data shows that people kind of became immune to the road safety ‘don’t text and drive’-campaigns. The new take on this old problem, BlindMeters.com, was able to brake that immunity from the start. People engaged. Massively. Over 5 million blind meters were typed on the platform BlindMeters.com after just 24 hours. The press immediately joined the conversation. Literally all National and Regional newspapers, all news-sites and all National TV-channels covered BlindMeters.com. Resulting in millions and millions of meters of press coverage. You can imagine the value. But this is only the start of something much bigger. In the mean-time the National Police authority is working to make BlindMeters.com an official part of the driving education of Belgian driving schools. BlindMeters.com will also extend in other European countries like France, Portugal and Slovenia soon.