The NRMA is asking frantic parents to put the phone in the glove box this Christmas holiday season.
A new media campaign from NRMA Insurance will see the ad and accompanying quotes from children explaining why mums and dads should ‘drive nice’.
James Bond film director Marc Forster who also directed Monster’s Ball and Christopher Robin more recently, has created the commercial.
It depicts a young girl and her toy bunny working to take the distraction of a mobile phone away from an overloaded dad tempted to answer the phone while driving as the little girl finishes school for the year.
New South Wales recorded 97 fatalities on its roads from December 2017 to the end of January this year, according to Transport NSW. The 37 killed in January alone is the state’s highest January result in three years.
Of the 300 provisional fatal crashes in 2018, 158 drivers and 50 passengers have been killed, including seven aged up to 16 years. More than half of all 2018 fatal crashes – 222 to be exact – have occured in ‘country’ areas, compared to 96 in ‘metropolitan’ NSW.
NRMA marketing director Sally Kiernan says, “We know that Christmas is a time of the year when the importance of family is heightened, bringing with it a spirit of togetherness and connection.”
“It is also one of the busiest periods on our roads,” she adds.
Drivers can expect to hear celebrity voices singing the ‘Drive Nice’ message to the tune of Christmas carols, and a Facebook “reality camera effect” will emulate the pink bunny character from the commercial over people’s faces to put them in the dangerous driving scenario.
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