ASA Adjudication on Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety

Ad

A radio ad, in association with Smooth FM, for a road safety campaign stated "Slow down and take life easy this year, because if you slow down you won't just feel less stressed. You could also help reduce the number of accidents on the road. The faster you go, the more likely you are to have an accident. Take it easy, slow down and always stick to the speed limit. Smooth Radio Winter Watch with Road Safety for North West. Working with you we'll make the regions' roads safer".

Issue

One listener challenged whether the claim "The faster you go, the more likely you are to have an accident" was misleading and could be substantiated.

BCAP Radio Code

Response

The RACC said the claim was substantiated by a policy statement from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), to which they provided a weblink. They also submitted a copy of a previous ASA adjudication on a similar ad.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA noted that the RoSPA document stated that "drivers and riders who are travelling at inappropriate speeds are more likely to crash", and that if an individual drives "more than 10-15% above the average speeds of traffic around them, they are more likely to be involved in an accident". We understood that inappropriate speeds included both 'excessive speed', when the speed limit was exceeded, as well as driving within the speed limit when that was too fast for the conditions at the time. We considered that, in the context of the ad's statement "Take it easy, slow down and always stick to the speed limit", listeners were likely to understand the claim "The faster you go the more likely you are to have an accident" to refer to inappropriate speeds. We noted that the RoSPA policy statement was based on reports from both the Department for Transport and the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), and we understood that one TRL report, titled 'The Effect's of Driver's Speed on the Frequency of Road Accidents", concluded that there was compelling evidence that "the higher the speed the more rapidly does accident frequency rise". We considered that the claim had been substantiated, and we therefore concluded that the ad was not misleading.

We investigated the ad under CAP (Broadcast) Radio Advertising Standards Code section 2-3.1 (Misleadingness) but did not find it in breach.

Action

No further action necessary.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)