Public Education Campaigns
The TAC is known for its powerful road safety public education campaigns which emphasize the personal costs of dangerous driving practices (such as speeding and drunk driving) using emotive, educational and enforcement based themes.
In 1989 the increasing cost of accidents caused VicRoads and the TAC to adopt a new approach including:
- a significant boost to enforcement resources targeting speeding campaigns to sign-post change and help set the public agenda
- a sustained and community-based road safety bodies, and
- an emphasis on evaluating their effectiveness
For its part, the TAC funds television and billboards coupled with high-impact advertising.
The TAC's most well known slogan is If you drink, then drive, you're a bloody idiot, which was introduced in 1989. This slogan has become a catchphrase in various parts of Australia as well as Victoria. In recent times, this has been replaced with Only a little bit over? You bloody idiot to reflect the danger of low-level drink-driving.
Arguably the TAC's second most well known slogan is Don't fool yourself, speed kills which was introduced circa 1994. Again, this has been modified in recent years to reflect low-level speeding, to Wipe off 5.
Other recognised TAC slogans from the 1990s include "Belt up, or suffer the pain", "Wake up to yourself, fatigue kills", "It's in your hands, concentrate or kill", and "Country people die on country roads".
Its recent safety campaign drew attention to life-saving in-car technologies, such as Electronic Stability Control and curtain airbags. The aim of this campaign was to encourage car buyers to ask for these important safety features when purchasing their next car (the TAC has set up a website to promote this, www.howsafeisyourcar.com.au). The Victorian Government has mandated this as a future design requirement.
Read more about this topic: Transport Accident Commission
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