With an estimated 3,300 Americans killed and 421,000 injured in 2012 due to distracted driving, raising awareness about the phenomenon is important, so the Department of Transportation and National Highway Safety Traffic Administration (NHTSA) have created a prevention campaign that debuted with the harsh video you see below. It kicks off the “National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.”
As is the custom with these types of campaigns, it will be run all across the different media types (in English and Spanish) and features a catchy (and hopefully thought-provoking) slogan: “U Drive. U Text. U Pay.”
The first ad features three young people smiling, chatting in the car and then the inevitable moment when the driver glances down to check a text and wanders into the oncoming path of a truck – you know the story: “all it takes is a second!”
However, while it’s constructive to have such a campaign, it would perhaps be better to not make it texting-centric, because, you know, another study says that “lost in thought” drivers (actually) cause more accidents than those using mobile phones.
By Andrei Nedelea
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