Texting While Driving Commercial Controversial

A public service announcement, now airing on TV in Great Britain, demonstrating the dangers of texting while driving, is creating some controversy because of its graphic nature. YouTube has flagged the video as unsuitable for people under 18.

The texting while driving commercial shows three young women driving down a British highway. The driver is texting a message to a friend while driving and, as a result, doesn’t notice when she drifts into the oncoming lane of traffic. She hits an oncoming car in a spectacular manner, apparently killing at least one of her companions. Another car smacks into the two crashed cars, apparently killing a young father.

The aftermath of the crash takes place over about two and a half minutes of the texting while driving commercial, with a passerby trying to help the surviving young woman, then the police showing up. The young woman is whimpering in pain while the police use the jaws of life to pry her out of her wrecked car. Meanwhile, a little girl in one of the other cars is crying for her daddy to wake up. It does not look like he is going to. The texting while driving commercial ends with the young woman being carried away in a gurney with a neck brace as she slowly shuts her eyes, slipping either into unconsciousness or death.

The notion of trying to send a text message while trying to control an automobile driving along a highway seems to be foolish indeed. But more and more people are doing it, as well as talking on cell phones while driving. A recent study suggests that texting while driving can be more dangerous than drinking while driving.

The use of graphic images to dissuade people from reckless behavior behind the wheel is not a new technique. I remember seeing video in a drivers’ education class in the early 1970s that had a montage of broken cars and gory bodies, some of them still alive and in pain, to warn against bad driving habits. This was before modern communications technology gave people new ways to be irresponsible behind the wheel.

I have never been cited for anything more than speeding, but I understand that some traffic schools, where one attends to work off a traffic ticket or a reckless driving conviction, still use gory video to demonstrate what can happen if one persists in being negligent while driving.

The texting while driving commercial is the first of the sort that has appeared on broadcast TV, so far as anyone knows. But if this sort of shock and awe is necessary to keep people from killing themselves and others on the highway, then perhaps it needs to be on the air, albeit with a disclaimer at the beginning announcing its graphic, gory nature.

Source: Texting While Driving Video: Commercial Too Graphic For YouTube, Tina Kells, NowPublic, August 19th, 2009