By now, we should all know the dangers of texting while driving. It is an issue that has been spearheaded in North America and recognized as a serious issue facing young people around the world. Texting while driving falls into the ‘distracted driving’ risk factor of road safety and since mobile phones entered the vehicle, campaigns have been springing up to combat this issue. Killer Crotches is a unique campaign from Alberta, Canada.
Of course, ‘crotches’ do no kill but to others, when texting, you appear to be looking down to your lap and it is this dangerous action that can cause a lifetime of damage. Averting your eyes for just five seconds from the road is all it takes for a crash to happen.
Alberta Transportation told their local news teams,
“Our goal is to get their attention, and to ultimately save lives, and the way to do that was to come up with a campaign that spoke to them and generated conversation,”
The campaign targets 25- to 34-year-old male target audience. The campaign features a multi-platform media outreach including, digital washroom ads, talking urinal pucks, web banners, radio adverts, bill boards and posters. The campaign also features an innovative parallax scrolling effect on its website which recreats the act of looking down at the phone while driving and all the things you could miss in five seconds. You can experience the campaign site here.
Commissioned by the Alberta Government, Canada, the campaign is an innovative addition to the field of road safety campaigns. They said, ‘distracted driving is a serious issue in Alberta. To encourage drivers to put an end to this dangerous behaviour, we launched a two-phased campaign. The first wave calls attention to drivers who attempt to ‘hide’ texting by taking their eyes off the road and staring ‘down there’. The second phase speaks more directly to the rational side of people by asking them to think about how long a text message takes to send, and the dangers that this lengthy distraction has on the rest of us’.
Have you come across innovative road safety adverts? We would love to hear from you and see them!