Campaign encourages drivers to carry out pre-journey checks

The Safer Essex Road Partnership (SERP) is supporting Highways England’s ‘vehicle checks’ campaign in the run up to the Easter holiday period.

The centrepiece of the campaign is an ad (above) which shows a plane full of passengers ready for take off. When the pilot says he’s skipped the routine safety checks, all of the passengers attempt to disembark.

The ad signs off with the message: “You wouldn’t fly without the proper checks, so why drive without them?”

The campaign has run on two previous occasions – in March and August 2017 – and Highways England says that both bursts of activity ‘showed a correlation with a reduced numbers of breakdowns’ on the Strategic Road Network.

The 2018 campaign will once again run on TV, video on demand, radio, out of home sites, printed media and on Facebook.

New channels this time around include the ‘Pay Per Click’ adverts that appear alongside Google search results, and ads which appear in the Gmail inbox.

Highways England acknowledges that ‘not checking your car before long journeys’ causes fewer KSIs than other behaviours, but was identified as the ‘behaviour that would be easiest to change’. The agency also says that fewer breakdowns on the Strategic Road Network will also lead to fewer ‘incidents’.

Nicola Foster, chair of SERP, said:

“We welcome this initiative by Highways England to attempt to reduce the number of breakdown incidents on the Strategic Road Network.

“While much of the advice in the campaign is common sense, it nevertheless serves as a timely reminder for drivers to do some relatively simple checks to help ensure they enjoy a trouble and stress free journey, particularly when setting out on longer trips.”

21 March 2018