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CHAPTER THREE ATTITUDES TOWARDS SPEEDING AND ROAD SAFETY ADVERTISING
3.1 Attitudes and beliefs regarding speeding
3.1 Most respondents acknowledged that they broke the speed limit on occasions. Some regarded driving slightly above the limit as commonplace and as widely accepted even by the authorities, who, experience suggested, rarely brought speeding charges against drivers found to be driving at such speeds.
"We've all broken it; every driver breaks the speed limit. But say it was 70mph, you might go 80 before you start feeling bad about it." (Male, 35-44, ABC1, Semi-rural, Infrequent Speeders)
"I'd be lying if I said I stayed in the speed limit the majority of the time whether it's 5mph or 10mph over or 20mph over, depending on where you're driving." (Male, 25-34, ABC1, Urban, Moderate Speeders)
"99% of people ignore it." (Male, 45-54, C2DE, Semi-rural, Frequent Speeders)
"I'd say a lot of the time the law's too severe. It's not right; it's not natural to be driving that slow." (Male, 25-34,C2DE, Urban, Frequent Speeders)
3.2 In contrast, many were critical of drivers who drove at speeds well in excess of the limit - "it's all these teenagers in baseball caps tearing along the road at like ridiculous speeds." Only a few respondents admitted to driving at 'dangerous speeds', at least on a regular basis, although many experienced drivers described their driving as mellowing with age and as they took on family commitments.
"I think after my daughter was born I had a different perspective when driving. When I was younger I didn't have the same respect." (Female, 45-54, ABC1, Urban, Frequent Speeders)
3.3 These beliefs also had important implications for the way in which respondents reacted to the Foolsspeed logo and proposition. Whilst it was widely accepted that people who drive at excessive speeds are foolish, fewer respondents were prepared to accept the assertion that all people who speed are fools, since for many speeding marginally above the limit was regarded as the norm.
"……everyone speeds, so it's saying everyone's a fool!?" (Male, 35-44, ABC1, Semi-rural, Infrequent Speeders)
3.4 In view of this distinction it is also interesting to note that normative (ie. speeding marginally above the limit) was rarely prioritised as a factor responsible for causing accidents. Instead, respondents were more inclined to attribute accidents to poor concentration and lack of awareness, often characterised as an inability to think ahead and anticipate the actions of drivers and other road users.
"I don't think people look far enough ahead when they're driving - that's my general perception of people, and I think that's where a lot of safety-related things are... People aren't looking far enough ahead to see the possibilities that are happening, they're chatting away." (Male, 35-44, ABC1, Semi-rural, Infrequent Speeders)
"I think it's due to carelessness, people just don't think ahead, you know, especially on certain roads, fast roads."
"People are not aware of what's going on round them."
(Male, 35-44, ABC1, Urban, Frequent Speeders)
3.5 Some respondents supported this belief by citing the ability of traffic police to drive safely at high speeds.
"I don't think speed really comes into it, I think it is you as a person and paying attention to what's around you all the time. It is like policemen - they can drive at high speed, but they are constantly aware of what is on either side and what is in front of them." (Female, 25-34, ABC1, Semi-rural, Frequent Speeders)
3.6 However, some drivers, typically infrequent speeders, challenged these more widely held beliefs, arguing that people who habitually broke the speed limit had a false sense of control and that driving within the speed limit was an important way of reducing accidents and serious injury.
"I would have thought quite a large percentage of accidents are caused by something happening that is totally unexpected, when the person is maybe going over the limit... they think they're maybe driving at a safe speed and all of a sudden they find out it's not as safe as they thought." (Male, 35-44,ABC1, Semi-rural, Infrequent Speeders)
3.7 One rural infrequent speeder described a particular incident to illustrate this point: whilst driving along a quiet country road a deer jumped without warning into his path and a collision was avoided only because he was travelling within the legal limit and had sufficient time to react. Importantly, these contrasting positions on speeding would appear to be related to differing levels of perceived risk and control attached to speed by the two groups. In this respect it was also interesting to note that advances in vehicle technology were often seen to enhance the driver's sense of control, by encouraging them to drive above the speed limit, sometimes without necessarily being conscious of the fact.
"Sometimes you don't realise how fast you are going, it is very easy to creep over the speed limit, because the cars are so smooth." (Male, 45-54, C2DE, Semi-rural, Frequent Speeders)
"I think car manufacturers have got a lot to do with it. You don't know that you're doing a fast speed unless you look at your speedometer, you don't even feel it because cars are so well made now and silent ... I think they've got a lot to answer for..." (Female, 45-54, ABC1, Urban, Frequent Speeders)
3.8 During the course of the discussions respondents also identified a number of other factors responsible for influencing speeding behaviour, some of which have been addressed by the Foolsspeed advertising. These included pressure from other drivers to maintain the traffic flow, failure to leave sufficient time to get to your destination, and pressure brought about by traffic congestion and unexpected delays. Some drivers were affected by these factors more than others. For example: infrequent speeders were more likely to report experiencing pressure to drive faster from following drivers than were moderate and frequent speeders; drivers in rural areas found the roads less congested and were able to plan their journey times more accurately than their counterparts in urban areas; and female drivers reported driving more slowly in certain areas and under certain road conditions than male drivers, (eg. when driving late at night or on unfamiliar roads).
"It's a bit scary, especially if it's dark and if you've got people coming up behind you with their full beam on, and you can't see in the mirror. It's worse if it's raining." (Female, 35-44, C2DE, Urban, Frequent Speeders)
3.9 It was also interesting to note that because of the lower levels of congestion and volume of traffic on rural roads, driving in these areas was generally found to be less stressful than in urban areas.
"If you're commuting to the likes of Edinburgh or Glasgow, you're faced with queues wherever you go. So I'm fortunate enough that I'm spending my working day driving in rural Perthshire and, unless you hit Perth at eight o' clock in the morning, you've no trouble, really." (Male, 35-44, ABC1, Semi-rural, Infrequent Speeders)
"The main routes in and out [of Edinburgh] are really, really busy now. Far busier than they were years ago. And more cars at the sides of the roads as well." (Female, 35-44, C2DE, Urban, Frequent Speeders)
"There's people out there in cars fighting! At least once a week you see a fight … when it comes to a deadlock … everyday there's an argument." (Male, 35-44, ABC1, Urban, Frequent Speeders)
"You can't get anywhere on time for being stuck in traffic." (Male, 25-34, ABC1, Urban, Moderate Speeders)
3.10 In addition, the features responsible for arousing concern in urban and rural areas also tended to differ. For example, urban drivers tended to focus their attention on problems caused by other road users, most notably bus and taxi drivers and parents on the school run.
"A bus driver went straight through a red light and my friend had to jump back onto the pavement. I know they're under stress but I think if you're talking about safety on the roads bus drivers are the worst for causing accidents." (Male, 25-34, ABC1, Urban, Moderate Speeders)
3.11 Rural drivers on the other hand were more inclined to focus on the wider driving environment, such as the dangers associated with winding and narrow roads (slow moving farm vehicles, farm animals, deer and so on) and the impact of local weather conditions such as snow, black ice, flooding and storm debris. However, in some rural areas older drivers, or so-called 'Sunday drivers', were described as a source of some frustration, particularly during the summer period.
"If you're trying to get somewhere and tourist season's kicked in and everybody's driving at 40 mph, that can be frustrating." (Male, 35-44, ABC1, Semi-rural, Infrequent Speeders)
3.12 In one or two instances rural drivers also identified motorcyclists as a high risk group, although the dangers they presented appeared to relate more to cyclists themselves than to other road users.
3.2 Awareness of and attitudes towards road safety advertising
3.13 The research sought to introduce the topic of road safety advertising in a naturalistic way by inviting respondents to discuss the types of measures authorities have adopted to reduce accidents on the roads. From this discussion structural measures emerged as being particularly prominent and topical. Traffic calming schemes frequently emerged as a discussion topic, and speed cameras also attracted much critical comment. They were widely ridiculed for being ineffective at moderating speeding in general and were often cynically dismissed as a measure adopted by local authorities to raise revenue. Interestingly, in contrast to structural measures, educational measures were rarely raised as topics in open discussion. In particular road safety advertising, despite being defined at the outset as the primary focus for the research, was rarely mentioned by respondents.
3.14 The greater prominence given to structural measures perhaps reflects the more immediate way in which this type of intervention is seen to restrict driver behaviour and speeding options. It is also interesting to note how immediacy was a factor which also influenced respondents' thinking around different advertising media for road safety campaigns. Later in the discussions, when reviewing different types of road safety advertising, some respondents attached greater credence to communication media capable of reaching drivers more directly when driving such as outdoor and radio advertising. It was argued that these channels were able to deliver more poignant messages, in a timelier manner, than other forms of media advertising, because of their proximity to the driving environment. However, it should also be noted that when asked to recall examples of advertising using these media, few were able to do so. There are a number of possible explanations for this: other advertising media such as television may have certain qualitative differences that make the messages more memorable, or it may simply be the case that previous road safety campaigns have failed to fully exploit these media.
3.15 It was also interesting to note that direct experience of a serious road accident, not necessarily as a participant but as an observer, could have a moderating effect, at least in the period immediately following the incident. In this respect respondents noted specific actions taken by police authorities to capitalise on this effect. For example, one respondent gave an account of how her local police had chosen to display the remains of a wrecked car in a local service station to highlight the consequences of speeding, while in another group some young frequent speeders reported how the parents of a local youth who had died following a car accident had given permission for their son's picture to be featured in a local poster campaign targeting young drivers. Both of these incidents had clearly made a strong impression, largely it would appear because they brought the realities of dangerous driving closer to home.
3.3 Awareness of specific campaigns
3.16 Following the warm-up discussion, respondents were asked to describe any road safety advertising they could recall having come across either recently or in the past. In most of the focus groups discussions centred around a number of prominent campaigns, the majority of which were television advertisements screened within the last year or so. A couple of respondents referred to radio advertisements they could remember for speeding, and on one occasion a female respondent made reference to a road safety poster campaign featuring a funeral procession. Whilst most of the advertising recalled was fairly recent, some respondents made reference to well-established road safety slogans and icons that had stuck in their minds from the past. These included the seatbelt campaign fronted by the television presenter Jimmy Saville, 'Clunk Click Every Trip', and long-running children's road safety campaigns 'The Tufty Club' and 'The Green Cross Code'. It was noticeable that when these campaigns were raised by one respondent in the group, the group as a whole appeared to have a shared memory of the campaign. This tended not to be the case with more recent television advertising, where respondents often struggled to describe the advertising in question and to jog the memory of other participants.
3.17 Five specific television advertisements were frequently recalled and formed the focus of some discussion in at least half of the focus groups. Four of the adverts formed part of the Department for Transport's recent 'Think!' mass media campaign: the Christmas drink driving advert set exclusively in a pub (recalled in seven groups), the current seatbelt advert 'Pizza' (also recalled in seven groups), the current road safety advert targeting teenagers which uses a camera-phone to deliver its message (recalled in six groups), and the flagship advert for the 'It's 30 for a reason campaign' featuring a little girl lying motionless against a tree by the side of a suburban road (recalled in seven groups). The fifth advert, recalled in five of the focus groups, was the most recent television advertisement from the Foolsspeed campaign, 'Doppelganger'.
3.18 A cursory review of these findings might lead observers to conclude that, given the prominence of the Department for Transport Think campaign, respondents were more inclined to recall road safety advertising that employs hard-hitting imagery and portrayals of accidents scenes and their consequences. It was certainly the case that these campaigns were often the first to be recalled and attracted more animated discussion. However, it should also be noted that the majority of the road safety advertising the target audience is exposed to would appear to exploit this type of imagery. A more considered analysis of advertising awareness would therefore suggest that a major significant factor affecting drivers' ability to recall road safety advertising is not the type of message or way it is delivered but rather how recently the audience has been exposed to the advertising. Clearly particular care needs to be taken when using awareness data generated by qualitative methods to draw these types of conclusions, particularly where information regarding the media strategy (spend, timing, targeting etc) have not been taken into account, but the evidence would suggest this issue is worthy of more detailed study using quantitative methods.
3.19 In addition to the advertisements consistently recalled, a number of other television adverts were recalled in less than half of the focus groups, typically in two or three groups. These include adverts from earlier stages of the campaigns already described, including two Department for Transport sponsored adverts, 'Julie Knew Her Killer', part of the seat belt campaign, and an earlier advert from the anti-speeding campaign which focussed on stopping distances and the implications for child fatalities. Also featuring here were the three earlier Foolsspeed adverts, with Friends and Family recalled in three focus groups, Mirror recalled in two groups and Simon Says in one. These findings would appear to support the earlier assertion that timing and how recently the audience have been exposed to advertising have a major impact upon their ability to recall advertising.
3.20 As well as assessing respondents' ability to recall road safety advertising, the research also revealed differences in attitude towards different styles of road safety advertising. There was a general tendency, particularly amongst males, to favour advertising that was hard-hitting and employed graphic imagery. However, although respondents claimed that this sort of advertising was "better" and "most likely to catch your eye", few would admit to being personally influenced by it.
"Even the worst ones, like the kid with broken arms and stuff, still doesn't have the impact when you're out on the road and you've not got a TV in your car reminding you all the time. The second the ad goes off another one comes on about something else, then it's the Champions League football, and it pushes it right out of your mind." (Male, 25-34, ABC1, Urban, Moderate Speeders)
3.21 It was notable that what respondents seemed to particularly like in these adverts was the sophistication of their special effects and the shock value, as evidenced in comments such as:
R1: "The women in the bar getting flung against the bar - that was a cracker that one."
R2: "I liked that other one…it was her son who wasn't strapped in - bang! That was really good….it was like a stabbing or something." (Male, 35-44, ABC1, Semi-rural, Infrequent Speeders)
3.22 Comments such as these suggested a certain voyeurism and vicarious enjoyment of the suffering shown in the adverts, which stood in sharp contrast to the way in which respondents, particularly female respondents, engaged with the 'slice of life' imagery and realism of the Foolsspeed campaign, which was regarded by many as a new and fresh approach to road safety advertising. This is discussed in more detail in Section 7.2.
"I suppose a lot of people would say you've got to have these shock adverts but how many times have you been - I've never been in a major accident, but I've had a speeding ticket so I can relate to that more [Doppelganger] than a big dramatic accident." (Female, 25-34, ABC1, Semi-rural, Frequent Speeders)
3.23 It was also suggested that whilst strong imagery had the ability to cut through the media clutter and to catch the viewer's attention, viewers who found this type of imagery distressing were inclined to 'switch-off' to subsequent exposures. These findings suggest that particular care needs be taken at the early stage of campaign development to ensure that the imagery and storylines selected are capable of retaining viewer interest.
3.4 Spontaneous recall of the Foolsspeed advertising and logo
3.24 As previously highlighted, recall of the four main Foolsspeed adverts varied, with the most recent advert, Doppelganger, recalled most frequently, followed by Friends and Family, Mirror and Simon Says respectively. The amount of detail recalled and level of discussion was noticeably poorer for the three earlier Foolsspeed adverts than for Doppelganger, which is most probably explained by the 3-year time gap between the screening of Doppelganger and the original campaign. Of the four Foolsspeed adverts, Doppelganger was the most widely recalled and Simon Says the least well recalled. In addition, there was also evidence of some of the Foolsspeed adverts being conflated. Whilst the conflation of images from different elements of the campaign is likely to affect clarity of message, it also suggested that the different advertisements were seen to some extent to form part of the same campaign. Indeed in some instances respondents confirmed this impression: "there's a few of them isn't there". In other cases recall of one Foolsspeed advert prompted others in the group to remember other adverts from the campaign. Significantly, despite making connections between the different Foolsspeed adverts, very few respondents spontaneously recalled the Foolsspeed title or campaign logo.
3.25 As well as assessing recall of the individual Foolsspeed adverts and the extent to which they were seen to form part of the same campaign, the research also examined recognition of the campaign identity. Prior to exploring detailed response to each of the Foolsspeed adverts, respondents were shown a copy of the Foolsspeed logo. In all ten focus groups the majority reported having seen the logo before. However, despite this high awareness, reports of where they had seen it were wide-ranging and in some instances inaccurate. Outdoor media (billboards, bus backs and bus stops etc) were the most commonly mentioned sources, with fewer respondents linking it with television advertising. In one group it was responsible for triggering recall of Doppelganger and Friends and Family, while in another it was associated with the Department of Transport seatbelt advert Pizza. This latter attribution is perhaps explained by the similarity in the images conveyed by the logo and the impact made by the pizza on the interior of the car windscreen. It was also interesting to note that some respondents reported recalling the blood splat graphic physically forming on the screen. It was not possible to determine whether these recollections were merely intuitive or whether they were flashbacks from the initial series of ten second adverts designed to establish the campaign identity. None of the respondents who took part in the research specifically recalled having seen the original set of Foolsspeed adverts designed to establish the campaign logo.
3.26 Most respondents appeared to understand the intended wordplay on 'full' and 'fool' in the slogan and the implication that driving at a high or inappropriate speed is foolish. However, as previously indicated, some respondents, particularly male drivers, rejected the assertion that all drivers who speed are fools on the grounds that speeding (or more precisely speeding marginally above the legal limit) was a widely accepted and relatively safe behaviour, and that other factors such as lack of awareness were a more likely cause of road accidents.
"I don't like it (Foolsspeed) because the emphasis is on speed. It doesn't make any sense."
"Yeah, speed doesn't cause accidents, it's inappropriate speed or other fools that cause accidents. It's not the speed." (Male, 35-44, ABC1, Semi-rural, Infrequent Speeders)
3.27 Some respondents made specific reference to those countries that were perceived not to impose speed limits on some roads, most notably Germany, to support these views. Instead, respondents were more inclined to link the proposition with drivers who drove at excessive or 'dangerous' speeds, such as boy-racers, and to the television adverts which characterised this type of behaviour. Importantly, few of those who took part in the research regarded themselves as excessive or dangerous speeders.
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