Stark road safety message issued to drivers

Sep 24 2008 by Julie Watt, Dumfries Standard Wednesday

A ROAD safety campaign is using shock tactics to convince the regions notoriously reckless drivers to buckle up and slow down.

Adverts showing hard-hitting images of crashed cars in which people have been killed or seriously injured are being aired on Border Television.

The campaign, which has been created by Dumfries and Galloway Safety Camera Partnership and the Cumbria Safety Camera Partnership, will run for two months.

Communications manager for Dumfries and Galloway Safety Camera Partnership, Stuart Hamilton, said: “Following the success of a joint campaign between the two safety camera teams last year we decided to tackle a common problem with speeding drivers. Having a common TV station in Border made the choice of sharing financial and other resources a natural one and research has shown that previous advertisements have a high target audience recall.”

The two advertisements are called Stop, which shows vehicles that have been stopped by trees, walls and other inanimate objects, and Killed, which highlights how many people have been killed in the remnants of crashed cars.

Mr Hamilton added: “There is a common misconception gained from TV and film collisions that people walk away from high speed collisions — they rarely do. The Killed sequences are particularly horrific but demonstrate the reality of what really happens when vehicles collide at speed.”

New accident figures released by Transport Scotland last month revealed a total of 22 people were killed in crashes on the 23-mile stretch of the A75 between Dumfries and Gretna from 1994 to 2007. And there was 24 fatalities on the 30-mile section of the A76 from Dumfries to Kirkconnel in the same time period - making the two roads more dangerous than the notorious A9.

The road safety adverts can also be viewed on YouTube sites.