12 October 2006

Groundbreaking campaign scoops award

A groundbreaking campaign aimed at encouraging young male drivers to drive more carefully has won an award from the Local Authority Road Safety Officers' Association (LARSOA).

The Association was very impressed with the creative concept behind 'Drive her crazy' which encourages young male drivers to "impress her with your skills behind the wheel...just like you would between the sheets".

Designed by media students working with FirstCar magazine, the creative uses words such as respect, handling, speed, control, timing and knowledge, to tie the two activities together.

'Drive her crazy' is now available for road safety officers all over the country to use in their area.

LARSOA is particularly impressed that the 'Drive her crazy' campaign evolved out of research, which suggests the most effective way to encourage young male drivers to drive more safely is to make bad driving appear 'uncool' and unattractive behaviour, and that is unlikely to impress their girlfriends.

The quarterly competition run by LARSOA is judged on the basis of innovation and creativity.

Simon Ettinghausen, chair of LARSOA, hopes members of the Association will use the innovative campaign to get the message out to young men. "Figures show that young men are in one of the high risk categories when it comes to causing accidents on the roads. It's also very difficult to get the safe driving message across to them because people in this age group find it almost impossible to imagine their own death. 'It will never happen to me' is a very common perception.

"This campaign shows that experience and skill are what is valued by the opposite sex, not speed and risk. It's very effective and we hope young men will sit up and take notice. We would encourage road safety officers to use it as a resource to promote this key message."

Ends.

For media enquiries please call Alison Ferst on 01287 610404 or 07779 435794.

ABOUT LARSOA

• LARSOA is a national road safety organisation representing road safety officers (RSOs) employed in local government across the UK.

• LARSOA represents 185 of the 200 eligible local authorities across the UK, assisting RSOs to fulfil their statutory role to reduce the number and severity of road casualties through education, training and publicity programmes.

• LARSOA publishes an up-to-date round-up of road safety news from across the UK on its website www.larsoa.org.uk .

• LARSOA also aims to influence national debate - government policy and action together with public opinion. The association works to achieve national recognition for road safety issues, commissions research into behaviour which contributes to road collisions and develops national road safety campaigns.

• The association assists in identifying achievable national targets to reduce the number of collisions on the country's roads.