Montgomery County is looking for teens who wouldn’t mind being photographed with tread marks on their faces.
The county’s Department of Transportation needs new models for its Street Smart pedestrian safety campaign. Part of the campaign includes advertisements online, on buses and elsewhere featuring painted tire marks on a person’s face. The messages “Pedestrians don’t come with airbags,” and “Kids don’t come with turn signals,” are meant to encourage drivers to yield to pedestrians.
The photo shoot is open only to teens enrolled in a Montgomery County high school. The county is looking for male and female teens of all ethnicities between 14 and 18. Selected models will get $40.
The county is more aggressively trying to prevent pedestrian-vehicle collisions with more outreach and more police enforcement.
Last November, the county warned of pedestrian-vehicle collisions in parking lots and blamed an overall increase of pedestrian collisions in 2012 to 121 collisions in parking lots and garages, a bump of 31 parking lot/garage collisions compared to 2011. It also launched a comic book-style graphic in Spanish to warn pedestrians of the dangers of jaywalking.
The county’s Pedestrian Safety Initiative is working with students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and is looking for more help from neighborhood groups to spread the word in Bethesda.
If interested in being part of the photo shoot, you can find contact information here. Parental permission for students younger than 18 and close-up photos are needed from those who apply. The announcement asks models not to smile in the photos.
Photo via Montgomery County Department of Transportation
