Traffic officials have noted a 50 percent decrease in the number of drunken driving arrests in the Western Cape since the launch of the Cape Argus, LeadSA and provincial government’s Name and Shame campaign.
Hector Eliott, head of the provincial Transport and Public Works Department, said the efficacy of campaigns was difficult to quantify, but according to provincial traffic officials, there was a significant decrease in the number of drunk drivers at road blocks in the week after the Cape Argus had published the names of people convicted for drink driving offences.
The department was looking at ways to judge the effectiveness of other campaigns. A large-scale road safety survey may be on the cards to deal with this.
The provincial government’s newest campaign is the Crash Witness where real accident footage is made public. The first three videos garnered over 40 000 hits.
A further 25 000 people visited the Safely Home website before it crashed and was loaded on to You Tube. Of the 25 000, 22 000 people visited the site on Wednesday when it was launched. The second set of videos uploaded had over 1000 hits by yesterday afternoon.
While people across the globe had access to the videos, of those who viewed it, 39 846 had SA internet addresses. Eliott said people reacted differently to shock tactics.
“Some are not affected at all, some are only affected for a short time, some change their behaviour as a result and encourage others to do the same.” -Cape Argus