Print is the signpost on the road to understanding
The Highway Code has been updated as most people will by now appreciate. There have been items in newspapers and broadcast media explaining the changes to which road users have priority under which circumstances. And when car and van users may or may not use a mobile phone. There have been informercials on social media but as one letter writer to the Guardian last week points out, no officially sanctioned printed material.
The writer was unclear what did and what did not apply because there has been no clear print led information campaign, no printed brochures, no hoarding posters and no printed copies of the Highway Code itself containing these amendments, some of which are now the law of the land. A second letter writer was able to say that the updated version of the Highway Code was being printed. And about time too. This ought to have been printed well before the changes came into force, accompanied by other print material so that drivers might find out definitively what the rules now are.
This is because print is unquestionably the medium of record. Once something official is printed it can be taken as fact. A website can be updated, an email can be deleted, let alone trying to rediscover a post on most social media channels. Digital is too malleable a channel or format to be trusted either by the disseminator of information or by the recipient. When something simply has to be known, print is the dependable, reliable source. Officials within government surely know this. Two years ago every household in the country received a letter explaining the rules around lockdown. By and large these were supported because the need for them was understood; it was there in black and white. The changes to the Highway Code do not warrant the same universal treatment. Not every household drives for one thing. But if the idea is that drivers should obey the changed regulations, it surely makes sense to give them something that has been printed to read.
Print is the signpost on the road to understanding
The Highway Code has been updated as most people will by now appreciate. There have been items in newspapers and broadcast media explaining the changes to which road users have priority under which circumstances. And when car and van users may or may not use a mobile phone. There have been informercials on social media but as one letter writer to the Guardian last week points out, no officially sanctioned printed material.
The writer was unclear what did and what did not apply because there has been no clear print led information campaign, no printed brochures, no hoarding posters and no printed copies of the Highway Code itself containing these amendments, some of which are now the law of the land. A second letter writer was able to say that the updated version of the Highway Code was being printed. And about time too. This ought to have been printed well before the changes came into force, accompanied by other print material so that drivers might find out definitively what the rules now are.
This is because print is unquestionably the medium of record. Once something official is printed it can be taken as fact. A website can be updated, an email can be deleted, let alone trying to rediscover a post on most social media channels. Digital is too malleable a channel or format to be trusted either by the disseminator of information or by the recipient. When something simply has to be known, print is the dependable, reliable source. Officials within government surely know this. Two years ago every household in the country received a letter explaining the rules around lockdown. By and large these were supported because the need for them was understood; it was there in black and white. The changes to the Highway Code do not warrant the same universal treatment. Not every household drives for one thing. But if the idea is that drivers should obey the changed regulations, it surely makes sense to give them something that has been printed to read.
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