Client department: Department of Public Transport

Campaign Timing: Jan – May 2011

The Department for Public Transport is aware of the issues that are facing the country in terms of road deaths and would like to invite recipients of this brief to consider taking on a PR campaign designed to inform and reduce the amount of accidents and fatalities among young drivers.

Background: The Department for Transport is responsible for providing safe transportation across the United Kingdom. Our goal is transport that works for everyone. We aim to provide a transport system that balances the needs of the economy with the environment and society.

The Department provides leadership across the transport sector to achieve its objectives, working with regional, local and private sector partners to deliver many of the services.

As part of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending review, the third of our five DSO’s (Departmental Strategic Objectives) sets out to contribute to better safety, security, health and longer life-expectancy through reducing the risk of death, injury or illness arising from transport, while promoting travel modes that are beneficial to health.

Objectives: Our overall objective is to reduce the amount of road deaths of younger drivers in the UK. Currently, Britain is at an all time low in terms of overall road fatalities. According to mailonline.com “Britain’s annual road deaths tally is the lowest out of 33 countries surveyed by an international transport watchdog.” However, despite the record drop in road accidents and deaths across the UK, there is still a sharp rise in fatalities among younger drivers. Specifically, those between the ages of 17-25 (the majority being males) are more at risk according to BBC News. Adrian Brown of BBC News makes an alarming statement that “In the past 10 years, the death toll has amounted to 32,298. As such road crashes are the largest single cause of accidental death for people aged between 5 and 35 years.”

Driving with friends has been cited as one of the major issues affecting young drivers across the UK. A report by the insurance company Aviva shows that when young people are driving with friends: - One in five (21%) pay less attention to the road - A quarter (24%) take their hands off the wheel - 15% perform illegal driving maneuvers

Younger drivers are also at a greater risk of being distracted by electronic devices while driving. BBC Newsbeat has cited 55 percent of 17-24 year olds saying they lost concentration while using sat-nav technology as well as MP3 devices. It also goes on to cite cell phone use and texting as being a major cause of distractions resulting in accidents.

Our goal here at the Department for Transport is to minimize the risks that our younger drivers are taking and work to implement effective tools that will help educate and influence them towards better driving habits. We believe an open PR system will help strengthen the lines of communication between the Department for Transport and its public.

Target Audience: Here at the Department for Transport we are interested in a broad range of groups and issues. But in this case we would like to specifically focus on drivers between 17 and 25 years of age.

Some of the forms of communication we would like to use are NGO’s, media outlets, educational institutions, as well as social mediums such as Facebook, Myspace, and twitter.

Key Messages: - Accidents and deaths caused by young drivers, particularly males, are steadily increasing due to lack of experience and unsafe driving habits - The Department for Transport is committed to doing whatever it takes to make the issue of rising fatalities among younger drivers more public - Decreasing the death rate of young drivers will make future generations safer and more responsible

Budget:

Timings:

Evaluation: The target for road deaths should always be zero but success will be measured by a decline in the number of road deaths for young drivers.

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