Students from the University of Limerick, the South East Technological University and Maynooth University today showcased their Road Safety Reimagined projects highlighting the dangers posed by drug driving. The event highlighted that 30% of people killed on Irish roads in the first three months of the year were aged between 16 and 25 – with drink driving, drug driving and speeding continuing to be among the primary causes of serious collisions on Irish roads.
Students from the three universities were tasked with “thinking outside of the box” to develop contemporary marketing concepts and solutions to positively impact driving behaviour. The ESB provided €8,000 in prize money.
The overall winning concept was devised by students from Maynooth University. Entitled ‘Chances of you getting home safe aren’t as high as you are’, they utilized an image of a dice to stress the unpredictability of drug driving.
The winning students, Klaudia Pasternak, Victory Omorodion, Saoirse Smith, Eamonn Kane, and Elizabeth Imole, will now work with An Garda Síochána’s Communications team to create a campaign incorporating their idea.
A special ESB Inspiration Award was presented to road safety campaigners Gillian and Ronan Treacy, whose four-year-old son Ciarán was killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver in April 2014. Mr and Mrs Treacy, first responders and hospital staff all featured in the Road Safety Authority’s (RSA) ‘Crashed Lives’ ad campaign in 2016. Mrs Treacy was also appointed as a Board Director with the RSA in 2018.
Sergeant Tony Miniter, Limerick Roads Policing, and Dr Christina O’Connor, Associate Professor in Marketing at UL, co-founded the Road Safety Reimagined initiative in 2023 to challenge marketing students to support communications to improve road safety.
