The Big picture:

Mumbai’s suburban railroads serve over seven million daily commuters; Shockingly, the rail service experiences over 3,600 fatalities per year. 8-10 people die everyday – crossing train tracks. Even with huge investments in building awareness to the dangers of crossing tracks, outcomes had not improved.

A behavior architecture approach involved designing the environment to enhance risk perception and reduce unsafe behaviors around the trains.  Key behavioral insights that informed the non-conscious design were that human beings underestimate speed of large objects and are most attentive when there is a gap/silence to break up a monotonous tone (train horn).

Transformative solution:

We designed a system of non-conscious interventions which included yellow reference lines on the tracks that improves speed judgement and helps people adjust their risk perception to match reality, as well as a Staccato horn that improves attentiveness and makes people take less risky decisions.

The Change:

Our solution brought down accidental deaths by 75%, in tests run by the Indian Railways. If behavioral sciences led design can save lives, imagine what it can do for your organization.