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New iniative that spreads water safety messages on beaches

19th August 2020
Posted by Aston Avery

Brits love a trip to the seaside, with 82% saying they have visited a UK beach within the last two years. Seaside destinations that are within two hours away are our sweet spot, with nearly two thirds (63%) willing to drive for this amount of time to visit a beach.

As the UK enjoys a spot of hot weather, the RNLI has come together with partner Ford on a new initiative that helps educate people, and raise awareness, surrounding UK water safety. Custom tyres have been designed to leave key water safety messages imprinted on sand. The key messages include ‘float to live’, ‘no inflatables’ and ‘Emergency? Call 999’.

The initiative comes as new research out today, commissioned by Ford, reveals that 40% of Brits have found themselves getting into difficulty in UK waters with inflatables. And as over a third (38%) admit they’d consider taking a swim alone, the new research also suggests important safety messages are not getting through to Brits – as only 44% know to call 999 if they see someone fall into water.

Writing messages in the sand is a long-standing tradition and is what inspired the new initiative. Using vehicles, water safety messages could be quickly spread across miles of beaches using the custom tyres. The tyres are made from a mould of each water safety message, which creates a rubber tyre sleeve that is wrapped around the vehicle’s tyre tread and fixed into place permanently.

Aston spoke to Gy Addington, Water Safety Lead for the South East region and volunteer lifeboat crew member at Margate RNLI to discuss more about the new iniative that Ford and RNLI have launched.

Photo by Elizeu Dias on Unsplash