No matter how many news articles were written 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.
It was discovered that when a driver is confronted with a flooded road, they often try to find reasons to allow them to continue driving on. This could be the large size of their vehicle, the urgency of their trip, etc. It was also discovered that at this moment it is already too late to try and convince them to not drive on. The answer lay in training drivers before they are confronted with a flooded road to perform the correct response, and that there was never any justification for them to drive on. That moment of confrontation became the focus of the campaign and was designed to trigger 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 New South Wales and other states across Australia. More importantly, there was a marked decrease in the number of deaths attributed to driving through flooded roads.
