Do gruesome road safety ads work?

[An_Gadai]

As in to deter dangerous driving and how is a link established? Or is it just wishful thinking? My life has been haunted by shocking, sometimes graphic ads with what happens when you drink and drive or just speed.

Warning some of these are graphic. For example:

- YouTube

- YouTube

- YouTube

The format for British and Irish ads is roughly the same. Juxtapose a pop song and a good time with a gruesome outcome, often involving a child.

[An_Gadai]

Bump?

[An_Gadai]

Let’s try this again. Has any research been done as to the efficacy of these advert campaigns?

[Aspidistra]

There is some cited here regarding the Victorian Transport Accident Commission’s (extremely gruesome, often) ads over the last couple of decades or so.

Reading that link it seems to be marginal at best - those raving about the ads’ effectiveness saying it’s “one of a number of factors”? (eg increased police presence) whereas other researchers who try to isolate the effects of the ads specifically are more dubious.

In December last year, SA researchers Dr Michael White and Dr John Walker released a report updating earlier research they and other researchers had conducted into the effectiveness of the TAC’s road safety campaigns.

White and Walker argue that “the increase in crash numbers in Victoria in the mid-1980s was due entirely to the economic boom and that the subsequent sharp fall in crash numbers was due mainly to the economic bust”, with other factors playing a small part.

“It is likely that relatively small changes in unemployment produce relatively large changes in the numbers of marginally employable young males on the road, with corresponding changes in crash numbers.”

White’s report claims that the TAC campaigns became effective only after the road toll had been substantially reduced.

White argues, among other things, that “fatality numbers started to fall many months before the enforcement campaigns were apparently becoming effective”.

“The TAC enforcement campaigns had very little, if any, role in reducing the road toll in Victoria in the late 1980s and early 1990s.”

(note that the above link is from 2003)