Road Safety Campaign With A Difference

The Danes have come up with a road safety campaign with a difference:

A ROAD SAFETY campaign that features topless Danish blondes flashing their breasts at passing motorists has been described as degrading, exploitative — and an enormous success.

Oh, right…

Never before has the state-run Danish Road Safety Council attracted so much attention at home, let alone around the world, as it has with a spoof news bulletin featuring a team of “speed control bikini bandits” who try to persuade young men to slow down.

Dressed only in red hotpants, they stand by the roadside holding 50km/h signs above their heads and jiggling their breasts at startled drivers.

Ah. Um… Now I’m struggling, really, to say something serious. I suppose the exploitation argument is bound to crop up, but I guess none of these girls has been coerced against their will. But is it road safety, or is it just a gimmick?

The latter, I’m inclined to conclude. Firstly it presupposes the myth that driving quickly is inherently unsafe. Driving quickly in a manner that is appropriate for the prevailing conditions is perfectly safe providing that the driver concentrates on the road and that the vehicle is roadworthy. Driving in a safe manner is about much more than mere speed. It is about assessing and reacting appropriately to hazards, maintaining a safe distance from other vehicles, remaining alert and in control. This spoof concentrates – as so many other campaigns have – on one small aspect of the overall activity of driving; speed.

So has it worked?

Julia Pauli, of the road safety council, said there had been “a very positive reaction”, with half the target audience saying they would think more about the dangers of speeding.

As opposed to the jiggling tits, one supposes.

What the other half were thinking goes unrecorded.

Best left to the imagination, I suspect.

However, the feminist groups don’t like it. Something that is entirely predictable as is their comment. This, from Randi Theil Nielson:

But feminists and family campaigners have condemned what they call a “ridiculous” campaign. “It’s degrading,” said Randi Theil Nielsen, of Denmark’s Women’s Council. “It is based on the idea that young men are preoccupied with sex and this view of young men is wrong.”

Randi Theil Nielsen hasn’t met many young men, then?

Meanwhile our own homegrown Labour MEP plans to raise questions in the house (sigh):

Mary Honeyball, a British Labour MEP, said the clip was tantamount to soft porn and promised to raise the issue with the women’s rights committee of the European parliament.

Doubtless it is. However, have we not lost the plot somewhere along the way? Was this not about road safety? Obviously not…