TfL Official Requested To Digitally Remove Close Overtake Of Cyclist From Suspended $1.3m TV Ad

A highly-placed Transport for London (TfL) official wanted to digitally alter a road safety TV advertisement after it was scathingly reviewed on social media. The ad was removed from TV screens and Twitter in early December. Nevertheless, the TfL official emailed the ad’s creative agency saying, “I’m confident that we will be back on air in January [2022].”

“Gutted it’s got to come down,” replied an executive from the VCCP ad agency of London, who went on to say the removal was “bowing to the minority.”

VCCP was paid $517,060 for creating the advert, with TfL budgeting to spend $1.34m on the whole campaign.

The emails between TfL and VCCO were uncovered thanks to a freedom of information request I submitted earlier this month.

The 60-second TV advert had been expected to run for some time on ITV, and other TV channels, and $67,486 was budgeted for cinema screenings, reveals another FoI request. There was also to be a poster campaign costing $133,187.

The “See Their Side ” road safety advert was withdrawn on December 1 and replaced with a less contentious one in the pre-booked TV slots.

The ad featured a female driver and a male cyclist shouting at each other after the motorist overtook the cyclist dangerously. The pair reconciled, but critics—especially cyclists—accused the ad of “victim blaming.”

The advert was first broadcast on November 17 and promoted on social media by TfL and VCCP. The ad has since been deleted from VCCP’s webpage and from TfL materials.

Soon after it was launched, cyclists and road safety groups criticized the advert for promoting “false equivalence,” meaning road users should share equal responsibility for road incidents. Instead, the TV ad clearly showed that the motorist was most at fault by overtaking when she shouldn’t have done, an often deadly maneuver known to cyclists and police as a “close pass.”

On December 1, Will Norman, the London Mayor’s cycling and walking commissioner tweeted that the campaign would be “paused to consider the feedback that has been received.”

Airbrushing

The redacted emails included in the FoI request reveal that name-redacted TfL officials were concerned that complainants were correct to say the motorist’s maneuver was illegal and that this should have been pointed out in the advert.

A TfL official asked the ad agency whether the advert could be amended digitally to remove evidence of the dangerous overtake.

“People feel that the cyclist/driver altercation is shown as a ‘close pass’ which is illegal under the highway code,” fretted the TfL official, adding that “it stems from the shot in the film … where you can see the geography of the car to the cyclist and to the pavement.”

The TfL official asked that “if we wanted to edit this slightly not to show the geography, how quickly can we do it and what cost would be [sic] have to edit and resupply?”

The VCCP executive said the edit would take a week and would involve manipulation to “retouch out the pavements on the right-hand side.”

It’s believed no digital retouching took place and that the TV ad’s suspension is permanent.

TfL and the Mayor of London’s office have been contacted for this piece, as has VCCP.

Reactions

“Road safety awareness campaigns targeted at multiple audiences, which try to address perceived problem behavior among drivers and cyclists simultaneously, usually end up creating a false equivalence between different road users,” said Duncan Dollimore, head of campaigns at Cycling UK.

“The result is a typically a fudged ‘share the road’ message instead of focussing on risk and the reduction of road danger.”

He added that any later digital manipulation of the advert would have “involved digging a bigger hole.”

“I’m shocked that [TfL] didn’t seek advice from cyclists on how this advert might appear from the cyclists’ viewpoint,” said Mike van Erp, who tweets as @cyclingmikey and who reports dangerous driving he captures on his onboard bicycle cameras.

Erp, who cares for a young person with Downs Syndrome, added: “I’d be disgusted if TfL were to resurrect this advert—it’s awful and wrong.”

Simon Munk, campaigns manager at London Cycling Campaign, said:

“The ad failed to communicate the supposed central stated aim of the campaign—that collisions with vulnerable road users are not inevitable. Its approach was not in line with behavior change programs that work, nor did the ad clearly target the biggest sources of road danger as a priority, which is central to the Vision Zero approach.”

He added: “The money would have been better spent on changes to roads to make them safer, particularly given TfL’s funding crisis. This was a huge waste of money and time. We desperately need drivers to reduce dangerous behavior and we need TfL to act on prioritizing the biggest source of road danger first and fast with rigor, using methods proven to deliver.”

It’s not just transport cyclists and cycling bodies who state that the advert was wrong. AA president Edmund King told me: “It is a shame that the campaign wasn’t better thought through as the objective of breaking down barriers between road users is something we have advocated for years. Knowing the sensitivities of such issues, it seems bizarre that it wasn’t aired more in focus groups made up of a cross-section of influential road users before it was launched.”

Calling the idea behind the campaign “well intended,” Kind added that the execution of the ad could, indeed, be “construed as shifting the blame.”

“The big loser here is road safety,” he concluded.

Vision Zero

The FoI materials revealed that the Mayor’s walking and cycling commissioner was not involved in the campaign brief or in signing off the advert. Instead, the key officials involved were five executives from TfL’s behavior change team. The ad was officially signed off by TfL’s head of customer marketing and behavior change Miranda Leedham, customer and revenue director Gabriella Neudecker, and managing director customer, communications, and technology Vernon Everitt.

The See their Side advert was part of the Mayor’s “Vision Zero” campaign, advocating for zero deaths on the roads.

An October 2019 advertising brief TfL gave VCCP said: “Vision Zero is a Mayoral Priority, but it needs to gather wider support and adoption within TfL.”

The brief also stated that TfL wanted their campaign to be adopted nationally by the Department for Transport (DfT).

“One issue to bare [sic] in mind is if we did want to bring this issue to the national attention is the lack of support from the DfT for Vision Zero as a concept,” continued TfL’s brief.

“It is not currently something [the DfT] support and we should therefore take this into consideration if we want to make the reach of this work as broad as possible.”

The brief said it wanted the advertising agency to promote “cycling rather than the car.”

“If we can make roads and the transport network feel safe, then it’s likely to encourage more people to walk and cycle on their journeys,” stated the original brief.

How the advertising agency and its appointed filmmaker used this brief to create an advert that many cyclists called out as “victim blaming” is not revealed in the FoI emails.

Three days before the campaign’s suspension, TfL instructed a market research company to carry out $6,748-worth of focus group interviews with motorists and motorists who also cycle. Those chosen to take part in the panels, said a briefing, must not have had a “close friend of relative killed or seriously injured in a road crash.”