myles blog

Dyeing billboards, well actually they just bleed a lot.

I wanted to make this blog post in reference to my college Diego Attolini most recent post about a new road safety in New Zealand.

He talks about how New Zealand struggles with road safety in the rainy season and how one of the cities is attempting to reduce fatal accidents.

No, this is not the start of new ground breaking state of the art crash resistant car technology being put on the roads, nor construction of safer motorways. Indeed the method to this motorway madness is quite simple. They are attempting to create awareness with new “drive responsibly” billboards.

Diego further goes into descriptive detail about the nature of the signs, and after watching the video clip I too was shocked. To sum the billboard up in one sentence: “holy @#%^!”.

Being a motorist myself I have hands on experience of driving and find advertisements are continually taking too desperate of measures to capture my glance. Regrettably this is the world we live in; everyone has to stand on their heads in order to get a flicker of our time.

Diego further goes into questioning the safety of these bleeding billboards, and I can fully agree with him that they are potentially more dangerous than safe.

What we should be focusing on to reduce accidents is getting more cars off the road with alternative green transportation and raising safe driving awareness before we get into the car. Showing very intense images to drivers who are trying to concentrate on driving safely seems counterproductive. Remember very few people get into their car and decide to crash, but distracting a driver for even a few seconds can cause life altering repercussions.

Instead of eye catching billboards, simple sentences like “drive safe” or “slow down” would service. Also with all the money the city would save with cheaper signs they could afford a few more bike lanes or buses instead!