Nunavik off-road safety campaign picks up national award

These young Nunavimmiut drivers show off the helmets they won as part of the KRG’s off-road safety campaign contest launched earlier this year. The campaign just won a national transportation safety award. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE KRG)

The Transportation Association of Canada has named a Nunavik off-highway vehicle safety campaign as the winner of its 2014 Educational Achievement Award.

The Kativik Regional Government launched its prevention and awareness campaign for off-highway vehicle safety launched in 2011, aimed at reducing the number of all-terrain vehicle and snowmobile accidents and injuries in the region.

Since then the campaign, dubbed On The Right Path, has launched a series of trilingual posters aimed at young drivers, plus a regional contest and prevention workshops in Nunavik’s 14 communities.

Marie-Eve Marchand, the campaign’s manager, accepted the award at a Transportation Association of Canada event Sept. 29 in Montreal.

Marchand said she believes the campaign was chosen because of its successful outreach to small and geographically isolated communities.

“I think it was chosen because we’ve been able to offer all these tools in Inuktitut, and we really built this campaign with people in the communities,” Marchand said. “So there’s a feeling that everyone is part of this.”

Thanks to the campaign, Nunavimmiut youth have learned about the risks involved with careless ATV and snowmobile driving, Marchand said, including the psychological consequences of severe accidents, such as cranial trauma.

There’s plenty at stake, she said — in Quebec, more than half of all off-highway vehicle accidents result in head trauma. From 2010-2013, 183 children were injured on ATVs in Nunavik alone.

To address that, the campaign launched a contest earlier this year called Choose Your Helmet, which gave away 100 helmets to young drivers across the region.

“Change is long-term and these are hard habits to break,” Marchand said. “But we’re seeing more and more people concerned about safety.”

You can visit the On The Right Path’s Facebook page here.