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New braking advert from SA misses mark |
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 The South Australian Motor Accident Commission (MAC) has recently released a new road safety commercial aimed a slowing drivers down. The ad contrives to show a slow-motion reconstuction, first at an initial speed of 65km/h and then at 60km/h. Not surprisingly, the 65km/h crash ends in death while the 60km/h crash ends with little more than a bruise.
Sadly, like all of these ads, it fails to recognise that initial travelling speed is just one factor of many that could affect the outcome of the crash. (driver attention, driver skill, tyres, brakes, pedestrian caution, to name a few)
We make the following observations about the ad:
- at the
moment the driver sees her, she's a metre or more before the road, clearly doesn't
look left or right, hears the screeching, but blithely keeps walking.
- the
road is clear in all directions, swerving, either with or without braking
would easily have avoided the crash.
- The scenario relies upon a 1.5 second driver reaction time (a bit slow) Using the same theoretical calculations, we note that a 65km/h driver with a 1 second reaction time would stop 4 metres before the 60km/h driver - perhaps the message should be pay attention instead of slow down.
We are concerned that this type of advertising imprints drivers with the idea that panic braking without any steering is the best/only way to react to such a situation, and that speed is the only relevant factor.
We encourage you to test your own reaction time (most people easily beat 0.75s) and see if you still think the 5km/h is the most important factor.
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National Motorists Association Australia 
