January 2007

Plea to young couples to 'drive safely'

25 road safety teams and safety camera partnerships will participate in the 2007 For my girlfriend (FMG) campaign, which will peak in the run up to Valentine's Day.

This year, FMG reminds young people that 'more girls die as passengers than as drivers'. DfT casualty statistics for 2005 show that 276 girls aged 17-19 years were killed or seriously injured while driving, while 373 suffered the same fate as passengers. By contrast 869 male drivers of the same age were killed or seriously injured, compared to 602 passengers.

The main campaign resources, a Valentine card and poster, bring this point home graphically - and encourage young people to 'drive carefully when you're out as a couple'.

While the Valentine card looks authentic on the outside, inside there's an image of a crashed car and the words 'I'm sorry - I didn't mean to kill you. I was driving too fast'. The card is distributed primarily via educational establishments - schools, sixth forms, colleges and universities.

The poster, which was first used in October 2006, was developed with the help of sixth form students who participated in focus groups. Under the heading 'Speed dating', the poster encourages young male drivers to slow down, and makes young female passengers aware of the risks they face.

Suffolk and Essex County Councils are jointly funding a short burst of TV advertising in the Anglia region, and Cambridgeshire County Council is running the campaign radio ad on a local station. The Hampshire & Isle of Wight Safety Camera Partnership and Cambridgeshire CC are running 'washroom' campaigns in pubs and clubs in their areas.

The road safety teams and camera partnerships participating in the 2007 FMG campaign are: Bath & North East Somerset, Bournemouth, Bracknell Forest, Bristol, Buckinghamshire, Calderdale, Cambridgeshire, Cornwall, Essex, Hampshire & Isle of Wight Safety Camera Partnership, Hertfordshire, Luton, Milton Keynes, North Somerset, Oxfordshire, Peterborough, South Gloucestershire, Slough, Southend-on-Sea, Suffolk, Sussex Safety Camera Partnership, Thurrock, West Berkshire, Windsor & Maidenhead, and Wokingham.