Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives

Drinking And Driving Wrecks Lives is the tagline to a series of public information films (PIFs) that ran in the UK between 1987 and 1997, addressing the problem of drink-driving.

Background

Unlike earlier campaigns which focused on consequences to the offender, this campaign was more aimed at showing the devastation that drink-driving can cause to the victims and their families, intending to produce an emotional response from the viewer.[1][2] The films were primarily targeted towards young working class men, who were most likely to be convicted of drink driving, and aimed for the practice to become socially unacceptable.[3]

Films

The campaign included several different films:[4]

  • Kathy (1991) showed a crying girl whose father had killed a boy by drink driving, while her mother scolded him off-camera.[2][5] This was to illustrate that drink driving was harmful to society as a whole, rather than only the individuals involved. The ad was only allowed to be shown after 9PM to avoid upsetting children.[5]
  • Eyes (1992) showed a young woman injured in a car accident while the driver's arrest was heard in the background.[5]
  • Dave (1995) featured a young man paralysed following a drink driving accident, accompanied by voices of his friends encouraging him to have another drink and zooming out to his mother attempting to spoon feed him, saying "just have one more".[2] It won a British Television Advertising Award in 1996.[6]
  • In the Summertime featured a group of friends drinking outside in a pub during the summer (accompanied by the Mungo Jerry song of the same name) before switching to the scene of a fatal car accident with the tagline "In the summertime, drinking and driving wrecks even more lives".[7]

Storylines and camera techniques (such as the extreme close ups used in the Eyes and Kathy campaigns) were designed to encourage drinking drivers to identify with the people affected by this behaviour, showing that drink driving is not a "victimless crime".[2]

Response

The campaigns were mostly shown on television advertising, and as posters on public buildings, and generated a considerable amount of press interest.[3] It was a success, and by January 1988, convictions for driving over the limit had fallen to a new low, considerably beyond expectations. The Department of Transport also noted a corresponding drop in road traffic casualties.[3]

The campaign was replaced in 1997 by a new slogan, "Have none for the road".[8] Drink driving related deaths fell from 1,640 in 1979 to 230 in 2012.[4]

References
  1. Allsworth, Tony (1999). "Anti drink driving campaign in the United Kingdom: Historical background, results achieved and challenges ahead". In European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ed.). Communication in Road Safety: International Seminar - Warsaw, 2-3 October 1997. OECD Publishing. pp. 77–82. ISBN 9789264173057.
  2. Smith, Adam (18 December 2018). "These are the most shocking drink driving adverts in the world". Metro. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  3. "Drink Driving: Drinking & driving wrecks lives". Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  4. "50 years of truly shocking drink-driving adverts". BBC News. 7 November 2014. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
  5. Rutherford, Paul (2004) [2000]. Endless Propaganda: The Advertising of Public Goods. Toronto: University of Toronto. p. 143. ISBN 9780802047397.
  6. Rutherford, pp. 108, 307.
  7. "Summer drink-drive campaign launched". The Independent. 22 June 1994. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  8. "A glass too much this Christmas". BBC News. 3 December 1997. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
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