The Scottish Government has launched the latest phase of its road safety campaign, ‘Speeding is a Dangerous Game,’ using video game language to reach young drivers. Created by ad agency Leith, the work will run across TV, cinema, social and radio. Aimed at drivers aged 17–25, the campaign borrows the visuals, tension and adrenaline of gaming to address speeding in a way traditional road-safety messaging often fails to cut through.
The campaign uses familiar video game language and neon heads-up display (HUD) visuals to cut through road-safety fatigue, making a simple point: real life has no reset button. By focusing on friendships and social consequences, it reframes speeding as a risk that affects the people young drivers care about most.
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In the film, four friends embark on an ordinary drive, only for a gaming-style HUD to overlay the journey as the speed increases and warning signals escalate. When a “speed critical” alert appears, a passenger finally intervenes, before the film closes with the line “Speeding is a dangerous game” and the message: real roads don’t reset.
The broader campaign extends the idea across static visuals and radio, continuing the gaming metaphor with lines such as “Driver is flooring it” and “Passenger is bricking it.” Together, the executions reframe speeding not as a personal risk but as a social one, focusing on the impact reckless driving can have on friendships and lives, and reinforcing the central message: real roads don’t reset.
Leith’s creative team, Debbie Morgan and Neil Mackinnon, said: “To make young road users sit up and pay attention, we wanted to meet them where they spend a lot of their time – video games. For us, the key was making that world feel as nuanced and recognisable as possible. The more we could make young drivers feel immersed in that world, the bigger the impact would be when we brought it back to reality.”
The Leith Agency
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