HW Richardson Group (HWR) has launched a digital driver safety campaign called Almost Dead, addressing every-day users of New Zealand roads and challenging them to consider the consequences of their careless driving justifications. The campaign has also partnered with motorsport driving legend Greg Murphy to deliver these important road safety messages.

Across its group of companies HWR has more than 1300 trucks and heavy vehicles on the roads. Each is driven by a living, breathing person – and all of them are seeing too many near misses as the result of poor driving from road users. Some end up not being near misses.

The Almost Dead safety campaign features the use of real-life footage from the in-cab cameras in HWR trucks. It’s a small insight into the daily experience of an HWR driver; watching drivers pass on blind corners, misjudging distances and outright dangerous driving – situations that leave all parties thinking, ‘that was close, almost didn’t make it’.

Almost Dead calls out this poor decision making on the road and encourages people to take a step back and really think – is it worth it?

HWR CEO Anthony Jones says as one of the largest businesses in the transport industry HWR has a part to play in keeping everyone safe on the roads – not just its own drivers.

“We know people don’t get out on the road to purposely drive badly, but however sometimes a minority choose to make poor decisions which leads to an extremely close call or worse still a catastrophic outcome. Almost Dead is a timely reminder to really think through your driving actions and ask yourself if trying to make that gap or passing that car towing a trailer is really worth it, is that 30 seconds really worth the rest of your life.”

Jones says the Group’s health and safety, especially of its drivers, members of the public the company interacts with and the potential for road incidents, is never far from his mind.

“This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night. We’ve got some extremely skilled drivers in the Group who have managed to outmanoeuvre what could have been a serious crash, but only by the skin of their teeth.

“It’s the kind of driving behaviour that no one thinks they’re guilty of until they find themselves in the middle of a dangerous situation. If you’re lucky, it almost would have been crash. If you’re not, you’re almost dead.”

Almost Dead will run continuously across HWR’s digital media platforms in the months to follow. Click here to watch: https://fb.watch/hwy9xEuZvt/