MassDOT Announces 11th Annual “Safe Streets Smart Trips” Video Contest

Competition encourages high school students to showcase their understanding of roadway safety across travel modes; Competition encourages students to showcase their understanding of roadway safety across travel modes


BOSTON — The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) is pleased to announce entries are now being accepted for the eleventh annual statewide Safe Streets Smart Trips high school video contest. This contest encourages students to showcase their understanding of roadway safety across all travel modes to try to decrease pedestrian and bicyclist injuries and fatalities. Per the contest guidelines, this year students are being asked to write and produce a 30-60 second video emphasizing “Empathy at the Intersection” and on the roadway.

“As part of our mission to deliver an equitable, inclusive transportation network, we intend to use every possible tool to stress the need for awareness of personal responsibility to safety on our roads,” said Transportation Secretary and CEO Monica Tibbits-Nutt. “This annual contest gives us and the students who enter an opportunity to create further awareness about the shared responsibility of road safety."
 
“To create a universal understanding of safe and unsafe behaviors on the roads, it is essential to have a conversation about community-centered transportation, where everyone can be exposed to the different challenges faced by road users,” said Deputy Chief of Innovation Jaclyn Youngblood. “We look forward to seeing how students across Massachusetts use their creativity to showcase and promote empathy, helping us to reach as many people as possible with this message.” 

The “Empathy at the Intersection” concept was created by MassDOT to draw attention to the various lived realities of road users, and it was on full display at the Empathy at the Intersection experiential exhibit at MassDOT’s 2024 Transportation Innovation Conference in Worcester, where attendees stepped back from their own commute and participated in different hands-on activities, to experience how vulnerable road users navigate streets. 

As an initiative of the Massachusetts Strategic Highway Safety Plan to promote safe walking, bicycling and driving behaviors, the contest is open to all Massachusetts public high school students and features a Freshman/Sophomore category and Junior/Senior category. 
 
Grand prize, runner-up, and honorable mention videos in each category (Freshman/Sophomore and Junior/Senior) will be chosen by a MassDOT panel. Winning videos will be shown Wednesday, October 23, 2024, at MassDOT’s annual active transportation conference, Moving Together, where the creators will receive their prizes including $600 Amazon gift cards for the grand prize videos and $300 Amazon gift cards for the runner-up videos. Top videos may also be used in future safety campaigns. 

To learn more about the Safe Streets Smart Trips high school video contest visit Mass.gov/roadway-safety-video or call 857-383-3807. 

Past winning videos can be viewed on the Roadway Safety Video Contest Results page, and on MassDOT’s YouTube channel playlist of the 2023 contest winners. 

For transportation news and updates visit www.mass.gov/massdot or follow MassDOT on Twitter at www.twitter.com/massdot.