WASHINGTON-A Bush administration-sponsored ad campaign aimed at teens will kick off early next year stressing the dangers of distracted driving, an approach more targeted than the one embraced by the cell-phone industry.
Unlike industry’s outreach efforts, which stress driver safety to the general population, the campaign created by Ogilvy PR for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will focus initially on novice drivers (15 to 20 years of age) and deliver a direct, no-nonsense message. Among the possibilities are “Smart Drivers Drive,” “Smart Drivers Drive Smart,” and “Shut up and drive!”
“We’re testing on a small-scale basis in a few communities,” said Joan Harris, a program manager at NHTSA. Harris said NHTSA is working to secure additional funding to expand the educational campaign to a broader population base.
Even before the National Transportation Safety Board forwarded distracted-driver recommendations to NHTSA, following an investigation that in June concluded cell-phone use by a young, inexperienced driver contributed to a highway accident in which five people were killed in Maryland last year, NHTSA was well on the way to putting a media campaign in gear.
Ogilvy PR’s $250,000 contract is small compared with the money industry has invested in driver-safety education in recent years, but government regulators hope to make a difference by fashioning a message for drivers most at risk. Teens account for less than 7 percent of all drivers, but account for 14 percent of all highway fatalities.
Cingular Wireless L.L.C.’s driver-safety initiative, arguably making the most progress in industry, includes a teen driver-education program that has been used in 10,000 high schools and 2,100 professional driving schools, reaching more than 3 million novice drivers.
“Cingular saw the clear need to educate teen drivers about the hazards of distraction,” said Harris. NHTSA has provided technical assistance to Cingular.
In a Sept. 22 letter from NHTSA head Jeffrey Runge to NTSB Chairwoman Ellen Engleman, which was provided to RCR Wireless News last week, Runge outlined the government’s game plan for addressing how to keep drivers’ hands on the wheel and attention focused at a time when an increasing array of electronic gadgets are finding their way into automobiles and adding to distractions that existed before the arrival of the Digital Age.
It is a challenge complicated by imprecise research, insufficient data and politics. There is no breath test like that used in alcohol-related crashes, and experts doubt whether drivers will voluntarily confess cell-phone use to police investigating crashes. In addition, there is a debate about where cell phones rank as a driver distraction.
Not even industry disputes using a cell phone while driving is dangerous, though most mobile-phone carriers oppose bans on the operation of handheld phones by drivers. Hence, industry’s contention that education-not legislation-is the answer.
Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile-phone operator, is the exception. New York and several towns-indeed, many nations-outlaw use of handheld phones by drivers.
Runge told Engleman that NHTSA is developing a metric to estimate fatalities and crashes associated with cell-phone use in the years 2000 through 2002. But Runge cautioned, “that the data that form the basis for this analysis is not available for distractions other than cell phones … and therefore it is not possible to gauge the magnitude of other distractions at this time.”
Runge also said distracted-driving studies under way will be completed in spring 2004 and 2006, with results to be sent to Congress and the states.
