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Data dump: no need for speed

Over the course of the last two decades, the average speed travelled by New Zealand motorists has decreased year on year. And while the mean speed has dropped more gradually from 123 km/h in 1996 to 95.7 km/h, the speeds among the 85 percentile—the 15 percent of vehicles recorded travelling faster than the mean speed—dropped markedly from 115 km/h to 102 km/h.

The data from the Ministry of Transport showed that Kiwis are driving slower whether they’re on the open road or in urban areas.   

And while road safety campaigning isn’t the only reason for these changes in Kiwi driver behaviour, Rachel Prince, a principal advisor at NZTA told NZ Marketing last year that “advertising is a cog in a big machine,” with better roads, better vehicle technology and better enforcement obviously playing major roles. But she also pointed to a recent study that showed that for every $1 spent on road safety advertising—without any enforcement measures—it saved the country $4 in “social costs”.

In this sense, Clemenger BBDO has, through its widely applauded road safety campaigns, also played a major role in improving the safety on our roads.

In the NZ Marketing article he said: “When we started working on NZTA, or LTSA as it was known then, the average mean speed if you were categorised as a speeder was 120kmh. Now it’s under the tolerance, around 107-109kmh. That progress hasn’t been made because of engineering or car safety technology. That’s happening because of lobbying and the work we’ve done to get people to accept that there are other people on the road.” 

Click here for an in-depth discussion on the effectiveness of Clemenger’s road safety campaigning. 

   

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