Road safety ads lost on boy racers
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Hard-hitting advertisements rolled out by the Road Safety Authority, which depict the devastating consequences of dangerous driving, are a "waste of time" when it comes to targeting the young men most at risk on Irish roads says the Chairman of the Road Safety Authority (RSA) Gay Byrne.
As the latest figures show that 27 underage drivers have been killed on the country's roads since 2000, Mr Byrne said he believed campaigns, such as the most recent 'Crashed Lives' advertisement which appeared on Irish screens over the festive period, did not deter the group most in danger of causing road fatalities.
"All over the world, not just in Ireland, the pattern is precisely the same -- the 17 to 26-year-old male is the most dangerous person on the road. And the experience in all other areas is that you can talk to them until you're blue in the face, you can advertise at them until you're blue in the face, you can advise them, but there is a particular difficulty in the psychological and psychiatric make up of young men of that age group which leaves them in particular danger and exposed to fatal accidents."
Speaking about the RSA's attempts to target young men with the shocking advertisements, Mr Byrne said: "To a great extent it's a waste of time for that particular group because that particular group set out to drive a car and they have four delusions. First 'I am immortal', second 'I am invulnerable', third 'bad things happen to other people, they don't happen to me' and, finally, 'when it comes to driving a car, I am every bit as good as Lewis Hamilton, if not better'."
Mr Byrne was speaking only weeks after he launched the RSA's new 'Crashed Lives' campaign, which depicts three true-life road tragedies. In one film, Dr Gerry Lane, a consultant in emergency medicine at Letterkenny General Hospital, tells viewers about the reality of breaking the news to parents. He says: "If you're a young road user, in love with life and fun, you don't ever want your mum to meet me doing my job, do you?"
Unfortunately, however, Mr Byrne believes such adverts, although highly effective on warning the greater population about dangers on our roads, have little or no long-term impact on the drivers who need it most.
"Young men in that age group have no fear. The part of the frontal lobe of the brain, which works on people to warn them of danger, is slower developing in young men that young women."
He continued: "It has been our experience in playing these adverts over and over to schoolchildren and boys in that age group, coming up to transition year, and they absolutely appreciate there are dangers, they absolutely appreciate the injury and death which is caused on the road, they absolutely appreciate the message we are giving them, but in the heel of the hunt, when they get behind the wheel of a car, they don't associate that message with themselves. They associate it with everyone else."
The RSA is currently targeting children from the age of five to transition year students, in trial schools, with a new road safety module, which it is eventually hoped will become part of the school curriculum.
The authority, in conjunction with the gardai, have succeeded in reducing the number of people killed on Ireland's roads in 2008 by almost one-fifth, to 275, according to the latest garda figures, a drop of 63 on the figure for 2007.
- NIAMH HORAN
