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Oi you, I mean me: Auckland Transport reminds young drivers to look out for themselves

Auckland Transport has released the next iteration of its ‘Oi’ campaign, again with agency Work Communications, targeting drivers who get distracted by their phones. This time, a young driver is reminded to keep his eyes on the road by his own subconscious.  

The latest spot features a driver who is interrupted using his phone by the versions of himself hanging out in his subconscious mind.

They remind him “Oi!” as he reaches for the phone to look at Snapchat, react to messenger or send text messages.

It ends with “How many times do you have to tell yourself? Mind on the road, not the phone.”

“After the first ‘Oi’ video went viral in 2015 with over five million views on Facebook and YouTube, it showed just how widespread smartphone use in the car is for this audience,” says Work Communications managing director Gaylene Anderson.

“We wanted to capture scenarios that are so relatable to this audience in an unexpected way.”

The previous ad for the campaign focused on outsiders catching the driver in the act, and prompting them to put their phones down with an “Oi!”.

The campaign was created after research was undertaken in 2014 on 17- 29-year-old drivers showed 80 percent of the participants admitted being distracted at the wheel, 62 percent had used their smartphones while driving and 56 percent had used an app like Google Maps and visited social media sites on their phones while driving.

Driver distraction crash statistics showed there were 21 fatalities, 61 serious injuries and 782 minor injuries between 2009 (when cellphone usage in cars was banned) and 2013, according to Auckland Transport’s website.

Auckland Transport’s manager of campaigns and customer insights Rob Pitney said earlier, people of all ages are using their phones behind the wheel and a third of all distraction-related crashes involve drivers in their twenties.

“We’ve discovered two-thirds of people in this group are texting, using apps and social media, doing emails and making calls while driving,” he says. “They’re the target of the ‘Oi’ campaign. We want to raise awareness of the very real dangers of using mobile phones while driving and to introduce a gentle ‘nudge’ that will enable passengers to encourage drivers to leave their phone alone.”

Late last month the NZTA has also released a humorous spot, warning of the perils of driver distraction in a campaign by Clemenger BBDO and OMD, which aimed to get drivers to put down their phones and see things from the perspective of their passengers through awkward intimacy.

It released an earlier spot in February urging drivers not to drive stoned, because of a higher chance of having a distracted, wandering mind. The campaign, called ‘Thoughts’ has a series of comedians overdubbing the TVCs, so the thoughts of the stoned driver continually change.

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