How to design and implement a drinking and driving programme pdf ...

Module 3: How to design and implement a drinking and driving programme
• 3.4 Social marketing and public education: This section shows how mass media
campaigns can increase public knowledge about legislation and raise awareness of
increased enforcement. The objectives and target group of such a mass media campaign
should be clearly identified, and advertising and public relations specialists
should be employed to create targeted campaign messages and materials. The effects
of the mass media element of the drinking and driving campaign on the opinions
and behaviour of road users should be closely monitored and evaluated, and lessons
learned should be used to improve the quality and impact of future campaigns.
• 3.5 Community-based interventions: Drinking and driving interventions
undertaken by and involving the local community can be effective in educating
the public about the risks involved in drinking and driving, and preventing it from
taking place. This section highlights the interventions of voluntary organizations
created specifically to prevent drinking and driving, to programmes undertaken by
employers, schools, outlets selling alcohol, and designated-driver programmes.
• 3.6 Engineering interventions: This section looks at the benefits of engineering
interventions to prevent crashes involving drinking and driving. These include
reducing roadside hazards for drivers and pedestrians, lower speed limits, better
lighting, “refuge islands” to allow staged road crossing, and improved pedestrian
signals at traffic lights.
• 3.7 Ensuring an appropriate medical response: In planning a drinking and
driving programme it is also important to consider the ability to respond to
crashes that involve victims who are impaired by alcohol. This means taking into
consideration the capacity to provide an appropriate first aid response and addressing
existing pre-hospital care and trauma care systems.
BOX 3.1: The Polish national road safety programme (GAMBIT 2005)
1. Revise laws on drinking and driving:
• to modify drink-driving and drug-driving laws.
2. Improve public education and communications to raise awareness of the role of alcohol in crashes:
• to nurture, through school education, negative attitudes to driving while under the influence of alcohol
or similar substances;
• to make “sober driving” part of driver training;
• to introduce systematic drink-drive campaigns.
3. Improve enforcement of drinking and driving laws:
• to provide road traffic enforcement services with devices for recording and testing drivers for alcohol
and other substances;
• to improve random driver-sobriety checks as a standard test procedure;
• to introduce random checks on drivers for substances other than alcohol;
• to promote vehicle devices that record and test drivers after they have been drinking.
4. Conduct systematic studies of road use while under the influence of alcohol or other substances:
• to develop a system for monitoring the problem of drivers using roads under the influence of alcohol
or other substances;
• to study the effectiveness of schemes designed to reduce the number of road users under the influence
of alcohol.
Source: Polish National Road Safety Council
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