Taken from The Examiner News: New campaign encourages young men to give each other the look over drink driving.
A new road safety campaign in Tasmania, leveraging off the familiar body language gesture, ‘the look’, aims to address the over-representation of young men in transport incidents due to alcohol.
Alcohol-related incidents account for 17 percent of road fatalities and serious crashes. On top of that, 25 percent of these are males aged 17-25.
‘Real mates do not let mates drink-drive’ is the strong message communicated by the new campaign, urging young men to give their mates ‘the look’ to prevent them from drink driving.
South Launceston Football Club is amongst the campaign’s supporters, and are promoting it through their club and community. Wayne Mitchell, Bulldogs’ president, mentioned how the campaign aligned well with the club, which has an average male age of 21/22.
“We like to look after each other, we want our players to go home to their families, especially after a function or a Saturday night,” he said.
“Our guys … take it very seriously and we look after our mates and that’s what it’s all about. It’s a team game, guys look after each other on the ground, but not just on the ground but off the ground as well.”
As the ‘Real Mates’ campaign asserts, words do not have to be verbally spoken – just a look can make a big difference.