Train Related Deaths tackled by Melbourne Metro Video

Melbourne Metro are trying the curb the number of train related deaths with a cute / odd video and an annoyingly catchy song. This isn't exactly something I could see TfL or any rail company in the UK doing, but it's a novel approach to advertising ways to stop people getting hit by trains. "Dumb Ways to Die" features a number of weird ways to get yourself killed. It ends with a number of train related ones including standing too close to platform edges, forcing open train doors, walking across tracks and skating or roller blading around platforms.

“We’ve got people eating superglue, sticking forks in toasters and selling both their kidneys. But truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and we still couldn’t come up with dumber ways to die than driving around boomgates and all the other things people do to put themselves in harm’s way around trains. The aim of this campaign is to engage an audience that really doesn’t want to hear any kind of safety message" said McCann Melbourne, the agency behind the campaign.

Chloe Alsop, marketing manager of Metro Trains, said: “The safety of our customers is our single most important consideration. So it’s terribly sad to see so many preventable accidents or near misses on our train system.”

“This campaign is designed to draw people to the safety message, rather than frighten them away. Especially in our younger segments. We want to create a lasting understanding that you shouldn’t take risks around trains, that the prospect of death or serious injury is ever-present and that we as a community need to be aware of what constitutes both safe and dumb behaviour.”

In additon to the video, the song's also available to download on iTunes and radio ads and posters in Metro stations will also help to drum the message home. Thanks to Jon Justice for sending this my way.

Rail safety's quite a tough subject to tackle as the consequences of taking risks around high speed trains are obviously pretty deadly. Constant signs saying "Danger of Death" have the danger of being ignored and even London Underground have taken a cartoony approach to safety with their Mad Men inspired campaigns

Perhaps something lighter is the way to go and Melbourne's approach of humour as an attempt to tackle a deathly subject may have cut through with a lot of teenagers.