Forget Tufty - it's cool to take care

ROAD safety has a big image problem. It's simply not sexy.

Probably, for the average adult, it conjures up images of men in polo-neck jumpers presenting public information films about the importance of keeping your distance from other vehicles on motorways. Or Tufty the squirrel offering sensible road safety advice, or using the Green Cross Code. Doesn't that take you back?

So this is the challenge. We have to persuade young drivers that taking care behind the wheel is the cool thing to do. These drivers are the prime target for road safety campaigns because they are more likely to take risks than any other drivers, due to a mixture of inexperience and feelings of invincibility. They will also be on our roads for the next half-century. One in 10 drivers is under 25 but one in four drivers who die is under 25.

Yet road safety has to compete with car adverts promoting top speeds, the big sardonic gob of speed guru Jeremy Clarkson, and a general lack of interest among news editors in covering road safety issues or even reporting on the 10 deaths and 100 serious injuries that happen on our roads every day.

In my dream world, Anne Robinson would tell Clarkson that he is the weakest link, and all boy (and girl) racers would religiously go below speed limits, particularly in towns and on bendy rural roads (while being given free tickets to test their reactions and adrenal glands somewhere else - on race tracks, dry ski slopes, or paint- balling. I don't really care as long as it's not the South Circular).

So when it came to launching the campaign Pledge to Drive Safely last month, Brake, the road safety organisation of which I am chief executive, was on the hunt for good-looking, popular celebrities who could help improve road safety's image. The Pledge asks drivers to promise to stay below speed limits, never drink or take drugs and drive, stay calm behind the wheel, take breaks on long journeys, never use a mobile phone when driving and maintain your vehicle.

The tragic thing is that many celebs are traffic offenders - from footballers to popster Geri Halliwell.

Geri not only got herself banned from driving recently, but also topped it by releasing an album this month which shows her rollerskating while holding onto the bumper of a car, under the title "Scream if you want to go faster".

Doubtless Geri doesn't know that 12-year-olds (many on skates, scooters, and bicycles) are more likely to die on roads than children of any other age.

But it's not rocket science to guess that's the case, and I'm surprised that no one at her record company thought about it long enough to decide the cover was a bad plan.

So Geri, if you're reading, log onto www.brake.org.uk and join the 41,000 drivers who have so far signed the Pledge to Drive Safely (for when you get your licence back) and, while you're at it, promise to skate safely too (in a designated area in a park and not on the road).

Maybe we should even ask Noel Gallagher to add safe driving to his list of "10 commandments" for Liam on how to be a well-behaved rock star, as revealed in the press recently.

LUCKILY, our offending popsters, footballers and young drivers have some wonderful new role models, thanks to Olympic gold medal champions, including the rowing eights team, who have signed the Pledge to Drive Safely and are promising to keep speed off the roads and in sport. And if those muscle-bound champs aren't helping make road safety attractive, I don't know who is.

Another supporter of the Pledge is world superbike champion Carl Fogarty, one of the fastest men on the planet. And when he tells motorbikers to slow down, they listen.

These stars are getting involved because they care about road safety.

They understand that it is only by accepting our individual responsibility for taking care on the roads that the deaths will stop.

When I tell people I promote road safety, I am, of course, often asked if that means I hang out with dear old Tufty, that cuddly squirrel from the Sixties. No, I reply. And he can jolly well stay in his tree, because road safety's getting sexy. It's cool to take care.

Copyright 2001
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