Educate

Crashes involving drivers striking people walking across the street are preventable.  Driver and pedestrian education is critical to saving lives and being safe on the streets. Best Foot Forward focuses on grassroots efforts and encourages everyone to educate themselves on the rights and resources available to them for pedestrian safety.

To promote education, Best Foot Forward brings its message to the forefront via presentations to neighborhood safety organizations, community workshops, and events. The coalition leverages traditional and nontraditional media to promote a pedestrian-forward dialogue and build a community of advocates.

Everything Best Foot Forward does on a daily basis– from pitching media stories and writing newsletters or articles to giving speeches and organizing Best Foot Forward events – is all part of a multi-platform, mass campaign to educate the public and invite change. Without education, high visibility enforcements are significantly less impactful.

Community Outreach

Best Foot Forward’s educational initiatives include:

• Attending community events, where the Outreach Team provides information and materials about pedestrian safety
• Proactively seeking out opportunities for presentations to neighborhood and homeowners’ associations, apartment or condo or other groups
• Partnering with local public and private schools for events and presentations to educate the next generation on the importance of pedestrian safety

Media Promotion

Best Foot Forward’s educational initiatives include:

• Working with traditional media, including TV, newspapers and community publications and websites to promote the awareness of pedestrian safety and Florida’s driver yield law
• Promoting Best Foot Forward’s message via non-traditional media including social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr) and the website iyield4peds.org

In short, Florida law states that all drivers must stop for a pedestrian walking in a marked or unmarked crosswalk. In conversation, many drivers say they didn’t know that was the law. For more in-depth information on Florida’s driver yield law, click here.

Best Foot Forward’s educational initiatives include community outreach efforts where pedestrian safety messages are presented to communities where locals live, work and play.

Since the program launch in 2012:

• 309 events tabled throughout three counties
• 367 presentations for neighborhoods, homeowners’ associations and more
• 123,796 people reached
• 161,656 educational materials distributed
• 22,035 iY4Peds bumper stickers and magnets given away

Interested in having Best Foot Forward come to your community event? Want to schedule a presentation? Contact us here.

Best Foot Forward works with traditional media on local and national levels, and across all platforms to spread the message of pedestrian safety and Florida’s driver yield laws. Earned media value is a calculation of what media coverage would have cost if purchased for promotion.

Since the program launch in 2012:

• $6,622,000 earned media value from news stories and articles
• 168,775,000 impressions estimated reach from traditional media

The Best Foot Forward coalition partners work together to expand the educational reach through social media. True to the grassroots foundation, social media and website traffic and e-newsletters help raise awareness of the Best Foot Forward program, its components, and the progress it makes.

• 1,417 fans on Best Foot Forward Facebook
• 9,276,385 organic impressions on Best Foot Forward Facebook
  
• 1,580 followers on Best Foot Forward Twitter
• 3,635,435 organic impressions on Best Foot Forward Twitter
  
• 696 followers on Best Foot Forward Instagram
• 21,917 impressions on Best Foot Forward Instagram
  
• 375,083 unique sessions on Best Foot Forward website