When it comes to road safety, history lessons are a waste of money

It’s not surprising that the Road Safety Authority (RSA) pushed back the launch of its new campaign by a week. Its “Mary Ward” TV ad was due to be aired on August 31st but that day saw the funeral of Nicole Murphy, one of the four young people killed in a road collision in Tipperary. Their deaths added to a tragic tally of Irish road users who lost their lives this summer; events that prompted extensive media coverage and public reaction.

The authority, tasked with, among other things, improving road safety through changing driver behaviour, put back the launch for “sensitivity” reasons.

The pressure has been on all relevant stakeholders to reveal their big idea on what to do to reverse the trend in road fatalities – from looking at speed limits to tightening enforcement; and for the RSA that means upping its game in communicating to road users most at risk.

When the ad did emerge it revealed itself as a departure for the authority, which typically focuses on changing behaviour on a broad range of issues including seat belt wearing, cyclist awareness, speed, distraction and drink driving.

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The Mary Ward campaign is different in that it is aimed at building awareness of the RSA’s overarching strategy of Vision Zero, a commitment to no road deaths or serious injuries on Irish roads by the very far off and unimaginable 2050.

Ireland has signed up to this worldwide strategy and the new six month TV-heavy campaign is in three phases aimed at “encouraging people to have a conversation with friends, family members and colleagues about Vision Zero”.

A youth engagement campaign is in the works, which will be weighted regionally, and an e-scooter campaign is being devised for launch in November.

It’s a “green jersey approach,” according to Sarah O’Connor, director of partnerships and external affairs at the RSA, “a national motivational piece”.

The creative strategy – devised by Dublin agency In the Company of Huskies – is based on the historical nugget that the first recorded road fatality happened in Ireland in 1869 when scientist and mother-of-eight Mary Ward fell out of a car and died.

The TV ad, directed by Peter O’Brien at Motherland and voiced by Charlene McKenna, tells her story. The concept being that by 2050, if Vision Zero works, the last road death will have happened here too.

A week in and the response so far, says O’Connor, has been positive with people commenting that they didn’t know the first road fatality happened here. So that’s nice, but with the horrors of the road deaths this summer still fresh in people’s minds there’s something strangely abstract about a campaign hinged on a story that is so sepia-toned.

And if “relatable” is a box high on the list to be ticked in all advertising campaigns – except perhaps bland heritage-themed corporate messaging – then Ward’s is the least relatable crash to appear in any RSA campaign.

By the time she got into the car, designed and built by her uncle, the Red Flag Act had set a speed limit of 6km/h and a vehicle had to be accompanied by a man waving a red flag and walking 60 paces in front of the car. The car she fell out of was going at 4km/h.

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In a week when there was talk of new legislation around mandatory drug testing at the scenes of serious crashes, Ward’s undoubtedly sad story seem less real-world relatable than simply quaint.

The second phase of the six-month long campaign – with radio ads voiced by RSA chairperson Liz O’Donnell – will talk about changes in road infrastructure, technology, enforcement and education “that will all assist in making Vision Zero a reality”.

The third phase after Christmas will return to Ward and promises to explain “what we can do differently, whether its avoiding distraction, lowering our speed or always wearing our seat belt”.

O’Connor says that the Vision Zero campaign – the RSA hasn’t released details of how much it is costing – “fits as a piece of a puzzle”.

Several of its more directional – and relevant – ads will run along side the Ward campaign with media buying including placements in the ad breaks around Rugby World Cup matches.

Drink driving messaging will, as per tradition, be broadcast around Christmas and the authority is planning to once again air its harrowing “crashed lives” series based on actual road deaths.

A youth engagement campaign is in the works, which will be weighted regionally, and an e-scooter campaign is being devised for launch in November.

Drink-driving messaging will, as per tradition, be broadcast around Christmas and the authority is planning to once again air its harrowing “crashed lives” series based on actual road deaths.

It is also looking into its “historical tool kit” – ads that have previously run that might be suitable for another airing – although O’Connor says they will be looked at carefully as the research around ads that shock shows that while they have high recall value, they have low impact in terms of changing behaviour.

It’s a busy slate but, with the figures for road deaths going in the wrong direction, it has to be.

Vision Zero is an under-the-bonnet strategy for official stakeholders to work towards – an ambitious in-house metric to measure plans against, but it’s oddly fanciful to expect one group of stakeholders, road users, to be interested in having that most abstract of corporate wishes “a conversation with friends and family” about it and to find Ward’s story anything other than a mild and irrelevant curiosity and very far from the reality that was laid bare this summer.