Stay involved and reduce the cost of young drivers on New Zealand roads

New Zealand’s road safety strategy Safer Journeys identifies young people driving on a restricted licence as having a high crash rate when driving solo for the first 6-12 months. A campaign was developed to reduce the incidence of crashes amongst restricted solo drivers. Parents were identified as key influencers. An advertising and public relations campaign was used to increase parents? awareness of the risk that teens face on their restricted licence, and to encourage parents of restricted drivers to “stay involved? at a time when the majority of parents would rather let go. The campaign directed parents to a website that provided advice and tools about how parents can stay involved. The advertising delivered high prompted recall, high takeout of intended key messages amongst the target audience and motivated them to visit the website www.safeteendriver.co.nz. Restricted drivers will continue to be a high crash risk group. Parental connectedness has been established as a protective factor against a range of health outcomes. Parents/caregivers/whanau will need to continue to monitor their restricted driver to reduce crash risk. Parents of adolescents are able to be targeted, as a means of influencing adolescent health risks, despite the majority of adolescent health campaigns excluding parental influence.