Share The Road to Zero

Governments are using social media to promote road safety, especially to the youths, and our Automologist MAC wants us to take notice...for the benefit of everyone, around the world.

Back in the old days when there were just three TV Channels for us to watch, it was easy for governments to disseminate information via public service messages designed to raise public awareness and, thus, change the public’s behaviour. All you had to do was to run a short advertising campaign and you could be assured that a very large proportion of the public had seen your advert. I will always remember the drive to cut unnecessary road deaths in the UK with the “Clunk-Click every trip” adverts designed to get us all to use our seat belts and, thus, increase crash survivability by a whopping 61%.

A previous DOE effort.

With the advent of multi TV channels, governments around the world have discovered what advertisers have also found out - the use of TV for public service messages is just too expensive and no longer effective. It is just too darn hard to get all the people to see your advert. The British Government via the Department of the Environment (DOE) has adopted a more modern approach of using social media to take on the job of modifying driving behaviours in the UK. Driving in the UK is still one of the safest places in the world to take to the tarmac, but the government there has decided to adopt a social media format to get the message out, to particularly address the demographic for which road deaths are still above the national average - not surprisingly, this is amongst the young. 

One of the great things about social media is that it is free to broadcast and therefore this allows the “advertiser” to spend more on the development of the campaign and the quality of the resulting video clip. The advertiser is also freer in terms of content, as censorship requirements are lower and thus campaigns can be a little more shocking or hard-hitting, which is of course how you make a video clip go viral. 

A screen grab from one of the videos.

For the global community, there is also a benefit to the UK Government’s campaign, and that is the issues they are covering are global. They affect us all regardless of where we live or take to the road. But best of all, it is absolutely free for us all to share and try to change the attitude of the global driving community. Please take a look at some of the work given to us by the British taxpayer, and do feel free to share it.