No matter how many news articles were out there about people dying from driving through flooded roads, it seemed the message simply wasn’t getting through to many Queenslanders, especially 4x4-driving males in outstate Queensland. Queensland Fire and Emergency Services needed a campaign that would finally get the message across – it’s not worth it, don’t even think about it.
Unsurprisingly, the best time to remind people not to drive through a flooded road is at the exact moment they are about to do so. But when someone’s in their car and faced with that situation, it’s impossible to know when that would be and they couldn’t instantly be shown an ad. Instead, the focus was put on a specific moment – when a driver approaches a flooded road, identifies the dangerous situation and rationalises the decision to proceed. It turned that moment of decision into the trigger for them to remember this now-famous advice – “If it’s flooded, forget it.”
Today, 'If it's flooded, forget it.' is an iconic phrase recalled by 86% of Queensland motorists and it has even been adopted by NSW and other states. More importantly, there was a marked decrease in the number of deaths because of driving through flooded roads.
