The impact of safe driving advertising campaign on fatal accident rates in New Zealand

Abstract

In effort to reduce the road toll, the Land Transport Safety Authority (LTSA) initiated a safe driving advertising campaign in October 1995. The safe driving campaign is a part of Supplementary Road Safety Package (SRSP) of the LTSA and focussed on alcohol-impaired driving and speeding. It was later supplemented by the rural driving and seat belt use campaign. The campaign is aimed at changing the attitude towards dangerous driving, the advertisements tend to focus on the dramatic consequences of dangerous driving, and use the fear appeal approach to achieve their objective. Separate poisson regression models were developed to represent different segments of aged groups and gender. There had been significant reductions in alcohol, drug, and speed related fatal accidents only for male drivers aged 15-24, 25-34, 35-54; and female drivers aged 25-34 after the introduction of the LTSA's safe driving advertising campaign. These mixed findings of use of fear appeal on the safe driving campaign are expected due to the basic preposition that different people fear different things.