When we think about what a road safety campaign is, the DGT advert of the moment comes to mind. But the DGT has been producing print advertising since the sixties. We have selected a few campaigns.
Speeding, distractions, restraint systems, the consequences of reckless driving... The dead, the injured, the maimed. Those who never come home. The official statistics. All these messages, which teach us to follow the rules and drive responsibly, can fit into the script of a campaign aimed at improving road safety.
In our country, especially at the end of the eighties, scheduling hard-hitting campaigns became, in a way, a genuine necessity (with television adverts and radio spots). The figures spoke for themselves: in 1989 the regrettable record of 5,940 deaths was reached. A long way has been travelled in road safety to reach the 1,126 of 2015.
Awareness campaigns in the mass media, and on channels such as social media, are designed to influence the population, to make people think. Social media, in fact, has been the strategy used in recent years to try to reach the young audience who, unfortunately, are often involved in the most serious accidents.
But let us look back to remember older campaigns, in this case print ones, by the Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT).
- Pedestrians (1979). An early campaign focused on children, in keeping with years in which events such as days of prayer for traffic were held, urging drivers to think more about their passengers and pedestrians. This was reported by El País at the time.
- Speed (1988). In this eighties campaign it was the television presenter Joaquín Arozamena, a charismatic journalist of the time, who was used as a voice of authority to reflect aloud on how important it was to reach our destination safe and sound.
DGT campaign, 1988. Source: DGT. - Alcohol (1992). “Alcohol is present in between 30 % and 50 % of fatal accidents,” said this poster. Drunkenness was beginning to take its toll in many crashes, so the aim was to make drivers see that you could not drive if you had been drinking. “Recklessness has a price… a higher one every time” was a very famous slogan of its day.
- Helmets and motorcycles (1993). Getting motorcyclists to wear helmets has been a constant battle. If they had to be persuaded with penalties, so be it. In this campaign, however, the attempt is to convince in a way that is—quite literally—more graphic. More direct.
- Interrupt your journey, not your life (2001). Once mobile phones appeared in our lives, they would also appear in DGT communications. They would progressively become the cause of most distractions, which today is an enormous problem. Although this poster also refers to the influence of fatigue and medicines on poor driving.
- Long and Short Journeys (2004). Christmas, given the number of journeys it generates, has been the subject of these campaigns year after year. This time we find a very positive message, a happy ending without the tragedy of a car accident, which can transform the lives of entire families.
- Seat Belts and Child Restraint Systems (2006). This poster very clearly shows an association of ideas aimed at parents: basically, it is a choice between two options. Let us remember that European Directive 2003/20/EC came into force that year, making the use of seat belts and restraint systems compulsory, including for children.