Protect your ball
Accident Prevention: The Swiss Council for Accident Prevention is launching a "fruitcake" campaign to raise safety awareness in recreational sports.
Accident prevention The Swiss Council for Accident Prevention is campaigning for greater safety awareness in recreational sports with a fruitcake campaign.accidents should not result in deaths or serious injuries in the future - this is the vision of the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (BfU). The private and politically neutral foundation has been campaigning for greater safety in road traffic, private households, leisure and sport since 1938. Despite all the information provided, one million people still have accidents in Switzerland every year - only a quarter of them at work. Under the motto "Enjoy sport - protect yourself", the advice center has been running a new prevention campaign against the consequences of accidents in sport since mid-May. A commercial and posters are designed to encourage people to wear protective equipment. Unlike their Zurich colleagues for the Sportfactory (see page 2), the team from the Bern agency Fruitcake, which is responsible for the concept, refrains from "scaremongering". Instead of showing the consequences of a fall without a helmet, they show what happens when you protect yourself. The plot is as simple as it is astonishing: the balls of a click-clack game become helmets that protect the heads of laughing men and women. "The campaign is linked to an emerging trend," CD Lahor Jakrlin comments on the strategy and explains: "Protective accessories and helmets are becoming increasingly attractive, i.e. lighter and better in design." What used to be rejected for aesthetic reasons is now part of the sporting lifestyle, the CD continues.
However, only a small proportion of the population wear helmets, as the helmet wear rate among cyclists in 2002 shows: Only 23 percent of Swiss people wore helmets. According to the BfU, the almost 300,000 sports accidents cause annual treatment costs of around one billion Swiss francs. Added to this are indirect costs of 2.3 billion Swiss francs. It is therefore no wonder that the Swiss Insurance Association is a cooperation partner of the campaign, which runs until 2006.
Simone Keller
However, only a small proportion of the population wear helmets, as the helmet wear rate among cyclists in 2002 shows: Only 23 percent of Swiss people wore helmets. According to the BfU, the almost 300,000 sports accidents cause annual treatment costs of around one billion Swiss francs. Added to this are indirect costs of 2.3 billion Swiss francs. It is therefore no wonder that the Swiss Insurance Association is a cooperation partner of the campaign, which runs until 2006.
Simone Keller
