There are over 30,000 injured and 3,500 dead on Ukrainian roads every year. Hundreds of people could have been saved if they would have just used seatbelts. However, Ukrainians just hate to buckle up. Something had to be done.?

As a digital platform connecting drivers and passengers, Bolt decided to draw attention to the magnitude of the safety problem inside the car but do so in an entertaining and fun way.?

There is one thing lots of Ukrainians hate even more than fastening seatbelts: shanson. A genre of songs praising the criminal lifestyle, which is popular among taxi drivers but disliked among younger audiences. It was this observation that became the basis for the Bolt behavioural experiment.

Bolt performed an experiment to make passengers fasten their seatbelts.

The shanson song, created especially for the project, was played through the Bolt car audio and could be turned off only by the passenger seatbelts – using special microswitches installed in them. When the passengers buckled up, the music stopped, thereby saving the passenger’s ears and saving their lives at the same time.

The video of the experiment was posted online to attract attention to the problem and increase awareness of the importance of all passengers fastening their seatbelts.

Bolt’s main target audience is young adults aged 25-35, city dwellers, who actively use smartphones and apps every day. Therefore, the main distribution medium was the online video of the experiment which was posted on the Bolt Facebook page (having the same core audience).

However, since the problem of safety on the roads applies to everyone — we wanted the activation to be fun and entertaining enough for other audiences.

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The video from Facebook was later reposted by public pages dedicated to traffic situations, road safety and others, including traffic and car influencers. News media embedded or put it into their own video players.

The project was implemented in several stages.

1. Writing a shanson song.

Writing the song lyrics, composing the music, and a studio recording with vocalists.

2. Car equipment.

Car seat belts with microswitches installed to turn the music off when all the passenger seat belts were fastened.

3. On the route.

Sending the car with the belt system and cameras on the route.

Shooting passengers’ reactions with hidden cameras.

4. Online video.

Montage of the shoot material and posting the video online.

The campaign was widely discussed and shared.?The experiment video gained over 15,000,000 media impressions (3.7 million unique users) across the news media, social media groups, fan pages, and shares. The reaction has been nothing but positive.