Creating Safe Transportation Options for College Students -- Change Strategies for Safe Transportation Behaviors
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
Get this paper ↗ (full text — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)
Summary
This report addresses the persistent issue of alcohol-impaired driving among college students, a demographic with high risk levels for traffic fatalities. Despite decades of enforcement and awareness campaigns, alcohol-related fatalities have plateaued, suggesting that traditional educational interventions have reached limited effectiveness. The study, conducted at the University of Rhode Island (URI), investigates a two-pronged approach to harm reduction: providing environmental alternatives to drinking and driving, and implementing educational interventions designed to modify attitudes and reduce resistance to persuasion. The research aims to determine if transportation alternatives can reduce DUI incidents and which persuasive strategies effectively change student behavior. The methodology involved a demonstration project and subsequent educational interventions. First, a Thursday night bus service was established to transport students from the rural URI campus to entertainment venues in Providence, addressing the lack of public transportation and high taxi costs. This environmental intervention served as a model for harm reduction. Second, the study utilized educational strategies based on Social Norms, Stages of Change, and resistance-reducing persuasion techniques. Students created and tested video messages targeting peers, incorporating strategies such as focusing on social consequences, avoiding preachy tones, and acknowledging resistance. Data was gathered through Campus Climate Checkup surveys, convenience samples of bus riders, and peer evaluations of the video interventions. The findings indicate that the Thursday night bus service was highly successful, with strong student response and significant substitution potential for DUI behavior. The service prevented a large number of students from driving after visiting clubs, resulting in a net positive impact on harm reduction. The lack of safe transportation alternatives had previously led to high rates of intoxicated driving, particularly among female students vulnerable to being stranded in Providence. Following the bus service, grassroots initiatives like "Rhody Rides" emerged. Regarding educational interventions, the study found that students often misperceive peer drinking norms, believing their peers binge drink more frequently than they actually do. The student-created videos, which focused on economic and psychological consequences for drivers and victims, were designed to overcome resistance by leveraging peer involvement and narrative engagement. The significance of this work lies in its integration of environmental management with behavior change theory. It demonstrates that providing tangible transportation alternatives is a critical component of harm reduction, particularly in rural campus settings. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of addressing resistance to persuasion in safety campaigns. By involving students in the creation of messages and utilizing strategies that acknowledge resistance and focus on peer relationships, the project offers a more effective model for influencing college-age demographics. The results suggest that combining structural solutions, such as safe ride programs, with targeted, resistance-reducing communication can significantly improve safe transportation behaviors and reduce alcohol-related traffic injuries.
Key finding
The Thursday night bus service successfully substituted for drunk driving behavior among students, while student-created videos utilizing resistance-reducing persuasive strategies effectively targeted peer attitudes toward safe transportation.
Methodology
mixed_methods
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | rosap | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-23 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
Topics
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.
Information type
What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).
- Applied Guidance: countermeasure evaluation