So, I’m an airman in Tech School right now. During our last week at Basic, I had to attend a travel and traffic safety briefing because my tech school (run by the Army) didn’t offer that briefing (apparantly it’s an Air Education Training Command requirement or something). Anyhow, the briefing included lots of neat little commercials and video clips, and one of them was a British PSA about why you have to wear seat belts.
To get to the point, the commercial starts with a guy and his girlfriend running around being all boyfriend/girlfriend-ey and frollicking around and such, and the narrator says “This man is about to hit his girlfriend so hard she gets brain damage”. Commercial basically ensues that the guy, sitting in the back, is the only one who doesn’t put on a seat belt, and when they get into a multi-car wreck, he basically bounces around the inside of the car (in slow motion), in the process richocheting off of everyone else inside the car, finally flying back and knocking heads with his girlfriend before coming to a rest.
The whole commercial is darkly funny in that “Holy crap!” kinda way, but I can’t find it on Youtube. If anyone knows where I can find this so I can show it to my friends (who get a kick out of various “Holy crap!” kind of stuff like this), I’d greatly appreciate it.
yeah, no punches are pulled with road safety adverts here - check out any of the Speeding, Drink Driving or Seatbelt adverts on Youtube and you’ll see what i mean.
That’s probably where you’re most likely to find the ad you’re after as well.
Whilst doing a quick search, i also came across this is current advert targeted at teens as well, which is another good example. Its grainy because its meant to look like its filmed on a camera phone.
I know the ad, and I think it might have been Irish, not British. It was certainly shown on Irish TV during at least 2003 and 2004. The track on the ad was by Samantha Mumba, if that helps at all.
Have you seen this one ?
It’s a drink-driving commercial where a guy gets pressed to have a second pint by his mates. Just then an attractive girl catches his eye and starts to head across to bar to him. As he accepts the pint she gets slammed around the bar like she’s in a car crash.
This one has a touch of dark humour, when the pizza topping hits the windscreen. On the other hand, I still can’t watch this without wincing.
The one garius linked to seems to be part of a more recent trend, of not letting you know it’s a public safety thing until some way in, and then hitting hard. (Pun not intended.)
I suddenly have a confession to make: I used to (as in, up until 3 minutes ago) not wear a seatbelt in the back. I was a teen during the days of lap-only seat belts, and I read a lot of information about how it was probably MORE dangerous to wear a lap belt in the back than to use nothing at all, so I made the conscious decision not to wear one. Eventually, I started noticing that cars now have shoulder belts in the back, but by that point I’d gotten so used to not wearing one that I just didn’t bother to change my habits.
This thread has changed my mind. So: A. Don’t let anyone tell you a message board never made anyone change their ways and B. Don’t let anyone tell you a scary PSA never made anyone change their ways and C. Thank you all for posting these. You may have saved not only my life, but the lives of my children and friends. Seriously.
You’re not the only one. That PSA, and the other one that goes something like “Like most victims, [Jane] was killed by someone she knew” - that had her unbelted teenage son’s head smashing into his mother’s skull from behind, breaking his nose, leaving him bleeding, in horror, and killing her outright - made me change my ways, and those of my passengers. As in, when I’m driving I will no longer proceed unless every single one of my passengers is belted up. Thankfully the message is creeping in over here, and the majority of people put them on automatically in the back now.
Now, I think about not wearing a seat belt in the back and ask what were we thinking???
Oh yeah, thanks a bunch. I wish they would do PSAs like that here in the US. The closest I’ve seen are the “Safe Happens” commercials that Volkswagon did a while back advertising their crash-survival safety features.
!!!
I need that one.
I was about to pop in and tell you I could email you that video, I have everything you guys have already posted and am always looking for more. ( I teach drivers ed, the Brits and Aussies have friggin Sweet psa’s, my students love and hate them at the same time. much better than the American Click it or ticket crap fest that qualifies as a psa over here.
also check out the Montana Meth psa’s, holy crap scary.
There’s one that’s playing at the moment that about speed and staying focused on the road. A car goes off the road. There’s a young couple at a intersection. The girl is sitting on a wall and the guy is standing in front of her. The car crashes into them and kills him, trapping him between the wall and the car. The girl whose legs are crushed by the car and the boyfriend just sits there and screams in pain and anguish with her dead boyfriend dead just inches away from her face. A old man looks at the scene. It’s a very moving a scary ad.
The most in your face one was the NI one with the car rolling through the fence and killing the toddler. Man the image of the car on it’s way through the fence will never leave me. Can’t find either though.
