Crumpled car carries road safety message

To promote awareness about the hazards of drinking and driving, WHO has launched a month-long campaign in Jalandhar and Hyderabad.

A crumpled car wrapped in newspaper clippings runs around Hyderabad, conveying a message on the effects of drunken driving. The car stops at every liquor and wine shop across the city, while volunteers distribute pamphlets that reiterate the key message of the campaign.

The Union Ministry of Health, in association with the World Health Organization, has launched a campaign to create awareness against drunken driving. Apart from outdoor activations, the campaign also covers other media such as print, radio and digital, and targets all drivers.

Executed by Aegis Media's Carat Fresh Integrated, the OOH campaign will run for a month in Jalandhar and Hyderabad.

Nata Menabde, WHO representative to India, says, "We call for greater action towards prompting a culture of responsible driving in our society to save lives on the roads."

Sampath Shenoy, vice-president, Carat Fresh Integrated, says, "Our idea was to effectively demonstrate the hazards of drunken driving."

Jalandhar and Hyderabad were chosen for the campaign as they were fantastic test markets for road. Though the agency did not disclose the spend on the campaign, it confirms that it plans to extend it to other cities in the North and South in the coming year, with an entirely new concept.

The campaign is a part of the RS 10 Project that was launched under the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-20 launched on May 11, 2011. It covers more than 100 countries with a goal to prevent five million road deaths across the globe by 2020. The UN Road Safety Collaboration partners that include EMBARQ, Global Road Safety Partnership, Johns Hopkins University, the World Bank and WHO, along with counterparts in Ministries of Health and Transport in different countries, are jointly working on this project.