Utilization of Social Media for Raising Required Awareness of Human Factors Affecting Traffic Safety

It is believed that social media applications have already being accepted by young generations as a platform to socialize, collaborate and learn in an informal and flexible manner. Social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook have become extremely popular recently. The number of Facebook users in the Saudi Arabia has approximately quadrupled in the last three years (early 2010 – early 2013), increasing from 1.39 million users to 5.85 million users. Youth (between the ages of 15 and 29) continue to make up around 60% of Facebook users in the kingdom. They prefer SNSs to access information as it reduces physical strain, speak freely and improve self-confidence and character-building. Road traffic accidents (RTAs) in Saudi Arabia are becoming a serious public health problem, especially among teenagers and youth. Human factors are responsible for about 85 percent of all car accidents in the kingdom. Education and awareness are playing a promising role in traffic safety. Types of awareness concerning traffic safety varied widely. That is why the study aims to introduce the potential contribution of SNSs to raise the awareness of traffic safety among the Saudi youth, and to reduce the ratio of RTAs in the kingdom. The paper emphasizes the effective role of social media; communication using social media is viewed to be personalized depending on the method of interaction with digital content (such as images, video, audio, and the written word). The paper introduced a potential utilization of SNSs as a one step forward towards achieving traffic awareness among Saudi youth to protect them from the potential damage caused by traffic accidents resulting of human factors.No ISBN/ISSNstatus: publishe