Community guidelines

These guidelines are designed to ensure that the Journey Beyond Road Trauma experience is a safe and supportive for all of our Community Members and keeps within the spirit of its foundation. You must comply with these guidelines as part of accepting the terms and conditions of this website.

The founders of this online community, Sandra and Kerry, want it to be a sanctuary that enables collective healing, remembrance and positive action.

We know that this is probably one of the toughest times in your life, if not the toughest. It’s a difficult and challenging emotional journey. We hope that by bringing together people with a shared experience, you will find support and understanding from people who have travelled a similar path. We understand that grief can make people feel a range of emotions including sadness and anger. These emotions are normal for people affected by road trauma. In discussing your experience here, we want everyone to feel welcome and behave in a way that is acceptable to other members of the community. That’s what these community guidelines are here to do.

Road trauma is a difficult and complex issue. Everyone’s experience is very personal and different in some way. Therefore you may not agree with everyone’s point of view. We ask that you respect the right of other members of the online community to express different opinions.

Journey Beyond Road Trauma is a space for support, healing and surviving – it is not a space for blame or an environment where you argue with others about the details of a crash. Nor is it a space to launch a public vendetta on a driver at fault. Instead, we encourage you to make constructive suggestions about how road safety can be improved. Please contact the police if you need to verify the facts of a crash. Hearsay can be very misleading.

Many people who have been affected by road trauma undergo an often lengthy and difficult journey through the grieving process. Grief is a journey, not a destination, so our aim is to build in ways in which community members can move through the grieving process and not get stuck in any one stage. As you may be someone who has experienced profound grief, you are encouraged to extend a helping hand to others.

To ensure activity is in the spirit of these community guidelines, we have a small team of community moderators. Please be aware that in most cases member content will not be moderated prior to publication. It is up to you to carefully consider what you publish. For safety and comfort, every community member is able to click on a link to ‘Report abuse’ on every page of this website.

Community members behaving inappropriately will first receive a warning and if they do not cease their behaviour we may decide to delete their account and permanently block them from contributing to the community.

Our community goals are to:

Create a space where those affected by road trauma can find understanding and empathy, a social network of support, a way to connect, a place to remember and tools to be positive and proactive
Harness the power of the personal story and use it to help and educate others about safe driving practices and increase the safety on our roads
Give community members a platform to conduct their own road safety campaigns, and as a community collectively work together to make our roads safer so this doesn’t happen to someone else
With the permission of the Community Member who has created the content, deliver stories from this Website across other platforms to serve to increase the public’s awareness of the effects of road trauma
Complement the activities of existing road trauma groups and initiatives and connect people with services in their local area
Create a brand that is synonymous with efforts to support people affected by road trauma in the same way the ‘Pink Ribbon’ now instantly represents support for women living with breast cancer

To achieve these community guidelines, we can't tolerate inappropriate behaviour.

Do's and don'ts:

When choosing your privacy settings, we hope you will select 'Public' whenever you can as by sharing your story you can help and educate others.
The content you publish should relate to the impact of road trauma and road safety issues.
Be respectful and courteous to other community members. This means avoiding publishing anything unlawful, offensive, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libellous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable. Sending abusive messages to other members of the community will not be tolerated.
Only publish factual stories or details. Do not impersonate any other person or falsely claim to represent any other person, whether living or dead, real or fictitious.
Do not publish any information regarding a legal case that has not yet gone to court or is currently in court. If in doubt, check first with a legal professional. We would be greatly dismayed if someone published information that could result in a mistrial and more emotional harm to the families involved.
Please respect the privacy of others. Do not use names or images of other people without their permission, or reference/cite people without their express consent.
When you submit content (e.g. photographs, music, words), you acknowledge that you have all necessary rights, including copyright. Respect copyright laws, and reference or cite sources appropriately.

Important things to remember:

Lead by example, and use the 'Report abuse' link to let us know about any information or behaviour that you think is incorrect, breaches any law, or is defamatory or inappropriate.
Make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and that the opinions you express in your profile, blogs, memory spaces, videos and in forums are views expressed by you and you alone and do not represent the views of the community as a whole or any other community member. Be clear and write in first person, e.g, I feel frustrated with the legal system, court was delayed again.
There are numerous ways you can tell your story and express your opinion in this community. Think very carefully about what you say about yourself or your personal circumstances online. The ripple effect of every collision travels a very long way, so please be aware that others closely connected to the incident may see your content if you choose to make it public. Try and put yourself in their shoes before you hit 'submit'.
Certain groups within the community may have their own guidelines posted. Please read these carefully and respect them.
Offensive and defamatory content will be removed and if someone continues to behave in an anti-social or inappropriate manner, their account will be deleted and they will be blocked from registering on the site in future.

Groups

Within the Journey Beyond Road trauma online community, members can set up their own groups of people with whom they share a common characteristic or interest (for example, mothers of P-plate drivers involved in crashes). Group owners and administrators are responsible for setting the tone of their group, and ensuring that our website terms and conditions and these community guidelines are followed. We ask and expect that group administrators will manage their groups lawfully, responsibly, appropriately and with a positive attitude.

Group administrators are prohibited from conducting commercial activity within their group without our express, written consent (such as charging fees to members, advertising or fundraising).

Remember that all groups' content is public and searchable on the website (unless you are joining or creating a group specifically marked as private).

Special notes

We have considered very carefully how drivers involved, whether they are considered at fault, or not, can play an important role within this community. Drivers are welcome to tell their story if their goal is to educate others about safe driving practices. We will not tolerate abuse towards drivers who demonstrate that they are committed to bringing about positive change.. However, if a driver’s story causes distress to families or friends of those injured or killed in a collision, we will ask the driver to make their profile and other content private so it is no longer visible to the broader community.

Finally, we want to protect our members from unwanted and intrusive contact. Any professional advisers who attempt to approach community members without invitation will be blocked from the site.