In Only 3 Months, SAPOL Wasted $1 Million of YOUR Money on FAILED Road Safety Ads
Earlier this year, Liberal MLC Heidi Girolamo filed a FOI request seeking information on the amount of money SAPOL had spent on advertising road safety messages from January 1, 2023 until March 31, 2023.
The response was shocking:
In only three months, SAPOL spent a whopping $1,083,126.06 on road safety advertising!
On an annualized basis, this equals over $4 million a year spent on ineffective advertising.
Taxpayers funded over a million dollars of advertising expenditure in a mere 3 months, and were rewarded with a runaway road toll that, at present, stands at 103 people dead compared to 61 deaths this time last year.
While SAPOL helps keep the advertising industry wealthy, 69% more people have lost their lives on South Australian roads compared to the same time last year.
SAPOL is the corrupt, wasteful and incredibly hypocritical organization that would have us believe you can lower the road toll by calling people “Selfish Prick” and by paying stunt riders to fall on a mattress on Gorge Road.
The gutter-language Selfish Prick campaign was an attempt to replicate the award-winning “If you drink, then drive, you’re a bloody idiot” campaign launched in Victoria in 1989.
In 1989, the Drink Drive/Bloody Idiot campaign was revolutionary. Over thirty years on, calling people names in an attempt to lower the road toll is old hat. We need new ideas, and it’s clear the corrupt SAPOL and the goofball ad agencies it uses simply don’t have them.
The juvenile and unoriginal Selfish Prick series, concocted by Black Sheep Advertising, might have won a prize at one of those self-indulgent award nights where the ad industry pats itself on the back, but the message clearly isn’t getting through.
Take the example of SAPOL cop Darren Paul Vance, who was caught driving a motor vehicle on June 26, 2021 (three months after the Selfish Prick campaign was launched) with a blood alcohol limit of 0.132 – almost three times the legal limit!
Other Selfish Pricks from SAPOL include:
– Sergeant Timothy John Schroeder, ID # 44015, who caused a dangerous and totally unnecessary traffic obstruction on an accident-prone section of North East Road on September 25, 2022. After a disgusted motorist gave Schroeder a brief but well-deserved horn toot, the foul-mouthed cop was captured racing down North East Road in pursuit at 90 km/h – thirty km/h over the limit – and swerving across lanes. Because you can never cause too much danger to the public when your fragile ego has been hurt, right?
– The two hoon-driving cops who rolled a car in a quiet suburban street, despite attending to no emergency and being involved in no chase at the time.
– Superintendent Christine Baulderstone, who suddenly drove her police vehicle into a pedestrian in the CBD. She not only refused to apologize but she and a fellow officer blamed and threatened the pedestrian. When the victim’s lawyer later lodged a FOI request to access security footage of the collision, it had conveniently “gone missing.”
– SA cop Anthony Skewes who recklessly hit a cyclist with his police vehicle, then left the scene before other police arrived. He also avoided presenting to a police station to provide particulars about the accident, and avoided the requirement to submit to breath/blood alcohol testing.
– The unidentified male officer who suddenly u-turned in front of a scooter rider, causing the rider to crash and suffer injuries and damage to his scooter. The cop tried to place culpability on the rider by claiming he used his indicator, but the footage shows the cop did not indicate:
– The unidentified female officer who, for reasons known only to her, thought it would be a great idea to suddenly swerve across three lanes on the busy Southern Expressway. The inevitable consequences of her insane manoeuvre were captured in the video below:
– The unidentified police officer caught breaking at least 10 road rules in under a minute at Elizabeth:
There are a lot of Selfish Pricks at SAPOL – the same criminal enterprise that in 2019 was tasked with reducing the road toll after the Motor Accident Commission was shut down. Little wonder the state’s road toll is the highest it’s been in years.
Source
SAPOL disclosure to FOI request by Hon Heidi Girolamo, May 5, 2023.
