Road safety advertisement that belittles the boy racers

It is the latest road safety campaign and there is not a mangled body in sight. Australian safety campaigners have decided to hit boy racers where they are vulnerable.

The television campaign, designed to encourage drivers to respect speed limits, features young women wiggling their little fingers at passing speeders.



The gesture represents a small penis in youth culture, but in the advertisements even an elderly woman uses the signal. So do other young men who are not in the driver’s seat. The New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority, the government agency responsible for the campaign, has stopped short of saying that length was the issue.

John Whelan, the authority’s spokesman, said: “To me the gesture says, ‘Speeding – no one thinks big of you’. It will cause people who are speeding to think twice about the image they are creating.”



The campaign will include advertising on television and in cinemas, and on posters at bus stops. There is also a 15-second internet advertisement that will offer speeders an “xtra-xtra small” condom. The A$2 million (£850,000) campaign has been prompted by widespread public concern in Sydney over a series of multiple road fatalities involving young, inexperienced male drivers who were still on their restricted, provisional driving licences.

The young drivers, known in Australia as “P-platers”, will have additional restrictions placed on their driving licences from next month, including a ban on using even a hands-free mobile phone in their cars and a ban on them carrying young passengers at night.