A New Traffic Safety Campaign Aims to Curb Drunk Driving in the Big Apple

A program called "You The Man" is the first segment of a traffic safety campaign aimed at alcohol-related accidents, which numbered over 1,000 in 2008. Designing the program required some strategic thinking. The people most likely to get behind the wheel drunk, males between the ages of 21 and 39, are also least likely to heed a traditional public service announcement. “This particular demographic hates being told what to do," explained Sadik-Khan. "They feel like they are being bossed around by their bosses, by their mates, by the government." The slogan "You The Man," a light-hearted shout-out to young men across the five boroughs, tested well across racial and socioeconomic lines.

Director of Strategic Communications Dani Simons knew that improving the current statistics would require a radically different approach. “The Ad Council started a drinking and driving campaign in 1983, and they’ve been running it pretty much continuously since then. But you know people are still drinking and driving. So one of the first things I did was ask myself what can we possibly add to this conversation."  Simons found inspiration in a Wisconsin program created by Michael Rothschild called "Road Crew." The program was launched in 2000 to address annual drunk driving numbers that remained stubbornly high statewide.  

“What they found was that guys knew [driving drunk] was wrong...but if they called a cab or something to go home, they would be ten, fifteen, twenty miles away from the bar in the morning and they needed their car to get to work. And they had no way to get back to that car. So for them, it was worth it just to take a chance and drive home at the end of the night. Michael realized that no amount of marketing or advertising was going to convince guys to do this differently.”  

Rothschild instead instituted a car service that transports patrons to any number of bars throughout the night for a flat fee of $20. Simons appreciated the program’s ability to eliminate the barrier preventing people from “doing what they already want to do.”  In New York City, people are less concerned about being able to get to work or get to their car than they are about waiting an hour for a bus, the vagaries of weekend subway service or wandering around in potentially dangerous neighborhoods late at night. You The Man’s Find a Ride feature makes it that much easier for anyone with a smartphone to punch in their zip code and pull up the number of the nearest car service.