Encouraging Road Safety Amongst Young Drivers: How Can Social Marketing Help?

This report investigates social marketing solutions to the problem of aggressive driving amongst young males in deprived areas.

Traditional approaches such as education programmes, authority driven attempts at enforcement, and fear/threat appeals seem to have had very limited success. A more recent approach called Keep Your Wheels trialled locally in Bristol has also had limited success.

This report considers social marketing as a solution to what appears to be well entrenched anti-social behaviours. It suggests that there is a strong a priori case for social marketing to address motives such as thrill seeking, status, masculinity, and perceptual issues such as risk perception, lack of empathy, and skill perceptions. Devices such as peer reflection, exchange, incentives, and creative communications require testing and further exploration.