Speed Sells

I went to a funeral recently, of a twenty year old boy who crashed his car into a telegraph pole. He was travelling well and truly over the limit on a long, poorly lit semi-rural road. He was young, fearless and he drove as young men are supposed to live, if you ask the Book of Cultural and Societal Norms, Chapter Four, Masculinity; fast. That night, I was watching TV and an ad came on for a family car. The requisite (annoying) couple was standing in their driveway, with the car glinting in the background, their arms slung around each other, laughing gaily. The script went something like this, forgive my patchy memory;

Inane dialogue, each of them listing what their ideal car must have, then …

Him: we wanted a car that was fast …

Her: safe!

Cue some sort of elbow nudging and head shaking and eye rolling and a suitable ‘boys will be boys’ facial expression from Her.

And that’s when I began to feel a little seed of anger plant itself in my frontal lobes. The message of this irritating, snapshot-of-suburban-life-ad was patently clear. Men are impulsive and thrill seeking and women are the Sensible Susans, keeping them in check. Men like fast cars, women like twenty airbags. If you’re a regular kind of guy, you love a bit of acceleration. Ergo, it’s masculine to speed. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing new. But a concept that has been peddled for so long now, with seemingly no repercussions, despite significant problems with young people dying on our roads in speed related car accidents. A concept that any logical person has to see has a direct influence on young drivers, just like violent video games have a direct influence on their young players. And that was the seed of anger blossoming.

The RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) cottoned onto this link a couple of years ago, and since then has been directly targeting males with a series of ads designed to slay the notion that a real man drives fast. The only problem is, the RTA is going up against the advertising industry, which seeks to perpetuate that very same notion.

But here’s the problem; speed sells. And, really, that’s all that matters. And it obviously matters more than those nasty road toll statistics, otherwise something would have changed by now. Speed is one of the biggest selling points of a car; sure, cursory mentions are made of the safety features, and comfort and room in the boot, but power and speed are always privileged, always emphasized. Even though we’ve (sort of) moved on from the classic ‘leggy model in the passenger seat, handsome salt and pepper haired man at the wheel, winding around mountains at the speed of light’ formula, and more towards the ‘affable parents with young children’ schema, the message is still there, loud and clear. Men, be they gangly sons asking to borrow Dad’s car, or genial Dads handing over the keys, like fast, speedy things and all the connotations they carry.

Despite the ‘no one thinks big of you’ campaign, seen above, spearheading a drop in speed related fatalities in young people in Australia, it hasn’t done enough – not enough to meet the Government targets anyway. Concerns are rising that young men are increasingly rejecting the warnings coming from shock ad campaigns, shrugging it off with that universal bullishness and confidence of youth. And while it’s all very well to install more speed cameras and lower speed limits (and have police encouraged to follow any P-plater driving down a road because they might make an easy $200 and knock off a couple of points for something like ‘not wearing P plates’ but that’s another story for another day) … ultimately a) governing bodies cannot do this alone and b) we cannot legislate spontaneity, poor decision making and fearlessness that comes with being young. It simply isn’t possible. But what we can do is start changing the way we so cynically and directly target those most responsive to effective advertising and homogenous social constructs – that is the only way we are truly going to start to see a result.

Now, clearly, girls speed. Young people dying in speeding cars aren’t only boys. But the fact of it is, more young boys die in speeding related car accidents than young girls. The discrepancy between sexes is significant enough to warrant a specifically male-targeted advertising campaign attempting to dispel the myth that speed equals masculinity and being generously endowed to boot.

The difference in the chemical make up of a young male brain to that of a young female brain is hardly a little known fact. The male and female brains develop at different rates, producing differing quantities of differing chemicals. And, it’s fairly obvious to anyone who has ever a) been and b) encountered a youth, that a young person’s brain isn’t fully formed. Decision making capabilities, risk assessment, attention to detail, concentration span, analysis facilities, judgment of consequences – this is all a work of art in progress as different parts of the brain mature according to a schedule we cannot change. Additionally, males are generally socialized to engage in higher risk taking behaviour, with the idea being it is more masculine. Add to this volatile basis, a (largely inexpensive, given the budget of most young people) car and watch the parents wring their hands. How does it seem fair, how does it seem logical and how does it seem right then, that the biggest selling point of a car, in their multi million dollar campaigns, is speed. That the subliminal message sent across several times a day, everyday, to receptive, young, still developing brains, is speed and power a man makes.

We know the smoking kills; so the industry isn’t allowed to advertise. We put warnings on the boxes, and funnel millions of dollars into advertising campaigns in which women have computer generated mouth cancer and Johnny Cash sings creepily in the background as a surgeon fossicks around for a tumour. Same goes for sun baking. Drugs. Alcohol. We regulate what movies and television different ages can watch and video games they can play, according to what we believe they are emotionally and psychologically capable of processing and comprehending.

So here’s my question; why, if we know that speed is a significant killer of our youth, if we know the psychological and biological reasons behind the young male tendency to speed, aren’t we doing something about the way cars are advertised? Surely there is a there a social responsibility of these car companies and their fat cat advertising firms to change the way they sell their cars?

The mixed messages are difficult to swallow, and the cynicism uncomfortable. Advertisers pander directly to what consumers respond to. They research, heavily, what consumers will respond to. Car campaigns are centred, nearly often solely, around the idea of speed, with a good looking man at the wheel. Obviously their ideal consumers are older drivers with more skills and less of a need for speed, but these ads are seen by a far broader scope of people than affluent mature-aged drivers; they’re seen by younger people who may not be able to afford that car, but will apply the schema of that advertisement to their own car, and own driving experience. And if they can afford that car, you can bet they’ll absolutely apply the schema of that advertisement.

I do believe it comes down to the issue of social responsibility. I know as well as the next person that we cannot lay sole responsibility for the mistakes, irresponsible actions and split second bad decisions of other people on movies, songs, actors, musicians, video games and advertisements. But I also know, as well as the next person, that when the selling of a product plays directly into a social ideal that, when enacted has proven tragic consequences, and when that selling medium has a proven social power to manipulate and influence (nay, when that entire selling medium exists on the premise of manipulation and influence) then the responsibility is shared. And the lion’s share belongs to the older, wiser lot who really should know better.

Image by Futurowoman on Flickr