Christmas campaign

This year is the 25th anniversary of the first drink-driving campaign. A great deal might have changed in that time but some traditions remain constant. The annual television and poster campaigns warning of the dangers of drink-driving have become part of the modern Christmas.

20,000 of us can be extremely thankful for these advertisements. It has been estimated that this is the number of fatalities avoided over the years as a result, in part at least, of the campaigns.

The total number of deaths was 1,640 in 1979 - last year it was 520.

In trying to bring that total down over 25 years, the Department of Transport has used a variety of tactics. In the early days, drink-driving was not seen as the anti-social activity it is today – then, the man caught over the limit received sympathy from his friends, now he is more likely to be condemned.

By today's standards the early campaigns used a less abrasive approach. The advertisement in 1976, for example, showed a woman being carried into an ambulance on a stretcher to the accompaniment of a soundtrack playing Roll Out the Barrel.

With perhaps a nod to the zeitgeist, in the early 80s the appeal was to drivers' self-interest - Don't drink and drive because here's how it will affect you, ran the message. You will lose your driving licence, you will have to beg your relatives for a lift, you will have to wait two hours for a minicab. Even worse, money was involved. Your car insurance would double with a drink-driving conviction, one advertisement said, and included the famous line from a drink-driver seeking a new policy: "But that's more than I paid for the motor!"

The 1990s brought the hard sell. In competing for people's attention with docusoaps, blood-boltered hospital dramas, routine violence, and the media doing their best to shock, the campaigns threw off restraint.

In one TV advertisement, a curly-haired little girl overhears her mother ask her father: "How am I supposed to explain you killed a little boy?"

In another, shown in 1992, the camera simply looked down on a road accident victim, possibly simulating an out-of-body experience, while paramedics tried without success to revive the same Shirley Temple look-alike.

And then there was the young man being fed liquidised food by his mother, while we hear a soundtrack of his friends encouraging him to have another pint. "Come on Dave, just one more," both his friends and his mother say.

In 1998, the campaign went whole-heartedly for reality TV, showing pictures said to be from an accident which happened "today". "We'll show you details of another accident tomorrow. Make sure it's not you,"

The increase in road deaths since last year is perhaps reflected in this year's anti-drink-driving advertising campaign. Launched by David Jamieson, the Transport Minister, the emphasis on reality remains with the depiction of the aftermath of actual accidents but, significantly, the poster for Christmas 2001 seems to return to previous themes.

It is, of course, a truism that audiences can only be shocked so much before dramatic impact is lost. The poster shows no blood or horrific injuries, but instead looks at the effect on the driver rather than the victim: "The drive home cost him his licence and his job."