Just saw this on facef**k or is it face book

Do you think the millions spent each year on drink drive campaigns actually make a difference? Personally I think those millions would be better spent building prisons to house the scum bags in. Everyone knows from a very early age that its morally wrong and socially unacceptable, I don't think a glossy advert will make the blindest bit of difference.

 

Actually @Joker it has had quite an effect on the Victorian road toll
When the campaign started, the road death toll in Victoria was 776 in a year. Last year, the total was down to 287.

 

They attribute the fall to an advert? I'm not convinced but that's what they will have you believe.

But assuming that after year one a death rate fell to 287 and remained constant then 5740 people have been killed since they started playing adverts of this type.

That's a fantastic result.

Sticking someone in 6x6 cell for the rest of their lives might have more of an impact!

 

Another TAC ad, no actors here, each of these people has lost someone in a car crash.



Expensive ads?
Yes!!!!
If they save one life then they're worth every cent to say nothing of the cost of the trauma to the families of these people, to the people like me who have to attend the crashes & often spend hours cutting a mangled corpse out of a wreck & for the people like my missus & her team who try to keep some of the accident victims alive long enough for their families to say good bye before the plug is pulled.

 

So the crumple zone on a bay is basically the whole front cab

 

I've nothing against the ads. My point is, which I guess I'm not doing a good job of getting across...

Are we to believe that someone sat in a pub, who has driven there and is boozing, is going to make a decision to now not climb behind the wheel of his car because he's seen a Hollywood produced glossy advert?

Or that the guy who spent 10 hours boozing on a camp site and went to bed at 3am will decide to sit on said camp site until noon or beyond, because he's just seen a glossy advert?

Or the guy at a party who drove there yada yada, or the guy at the barbecue who runs out I booze will decide not to drive to the off license because yada yada.

The people who drink and drive believe that its acceptable, they believe that drinking won't affect their responses, they believe they'll get away with it, they think its ok because they're only travelling a couple of miles etc etc. are we to believe a glossy advert will have enough of an impact on their moral sensibilities that it will sway their decision process, whilst drunk or not, to not get behind the wheel of a car? Its *****.

Maybe the adverts do a good job at convincing people like you or I, who have social morals, that we're correct to follow a morally acceptable path.

In the UK 230149 are currently banned for drink driving. These are the ones who have been caught. Of these 42207 are repeat offenders! From all data 1 in 4 is typically a repeat offender.

So the adverts didn't work, the punishment (weak in my view) didn't work for 42000 people who having been done for drink driving went on to do it again. There are differing estimates but it's claimed around 2million in the UK regularly drink over the limit, whilst 5 million drive having consumed alcohol and they don't know what the alcohol content of their drink was.

280 were killed last year as a result of drink driving. An increase of 17% on the previous year. We have drink drive advert campaigns throughout this period

They don't work because those who do it think its acceptable and the punishments are not severe enough.

4 years ago a cyclist was killed by a drunk truck driver who had been convicted for drink driving 3 times before, disqualified from driving 20 times and convicted of dangerous driving on 3 occasions. After killing someone he was banned for 5 years and imprisoned for 7 years. He served 2 1/2 years of his sentence.

Until it is wholly viewed as morally unacceptable and the punishments for doing it are severely changed with incredibly lengthy and severe jail terms then not a lot will change, particulaly as with less policing the frequency and quantity of breath tests are also dropping.

There endeth my surmon, drink drivers are scum!

 

Joker you cannot disregard the effect that these road safety campaigns have just because some knobs still drink and drive, don't wear seatbelts etc etc. I quite agree with you about the pathetic sentences given to some people who break the laws regarding driving.
Your lorry driver shouldn't have been in a position to kill the cyclist given his past driving record, he shouldn't ever have got his licence back after his third conviction for dangerous driving. He should have to get the bus for the rest of his life.
People seem to think driving is a right when actually it should be a privilege.
There was a thread on here a while back about shopping friends who drive drunk for £1000 reward, I was pleased to read that the vast majority of respondents stated that they would either shop their friend or prevent them from driving. It is this attitude which needs to be fostered and these hard hitting adverts are, in my opinion, a good way of making drinking and driving less and less acceptable.

I also think that rather than being released from prison early the lorry driver should serve the whole sentence, I mean what did he get let out early for? Good behaviour and not crashing any vehicles while he was in prison.

 

Most offenders with a custodial sentence are entitled to be considered for parole after serving 50% of their sentence. Whenever you hear of someone getting x number of years as a sentence, always halve it for the true figure. Additionally, people can be released earlier on tag. It does seem to make a mockery of the system, because if you're going to sentence someone to a term of imprisonment, then they should serve that sentence unless there are very good reasons for shortening it. However that starts to go into the realms of punitive versus rehabilitatory rationale for banging someone up.

 

Yes and for serial offenders I'm all for punitive sentences.