I love Werner Herzog, both his feature movies and his documentaries. I don’t know all the details, but the cell phone companies got him to make a movie about texting while driving.
It’s only 30 minutes long, but man, it is powerful.
Reported for spam
(not really. But look at that title!)
Yeah, I should have made a better title. No wonder this dropped like a rock. I may request a less spammy sounding title. Thanks, BigT.
I edited the title.
The Amish father’s letter to the man who killed his family was…weird. Obviously it was about forgiveness, but it didn’t have any aspect of human connection.
Is it bloody?
No. No footage of the accidents or such things. Only testimonies by the victims, their families or the culprits.
I watched this a couple of days ago. Educational campaigns like this help. This one’s a bit dry and almost emotionless, except for a few tears and the one murderer sitting on the side of the road, sobbing. It was still powerful though.
If anyone driving irresponsibly hurt or killed a loved one, or hurt me, I would never forgive them (the case where the blacksmith was hit by the texter and was pushed into the path of the astronomer’s car doesn’t apply. He’s 100% blameless and a victim too). I don’t understand the forgiveness shown in the documentary. Those victims are better people than me.
The texting while driving part would never apply to me, because even though I used to drive everywhere, even drove for a living for several years, I don’t drive now, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to text or talk on a cell phone and drive, but I could easily be on the other side, my life changed forever in a split second by some lowlife hitting me or a loved one while texting. [/morally superior]
That could apply for someone driving after drinking (not even necessarily legally drunk), or high (even if just a few tokes from a joint high), or reaching for something, or eating, or nodding off, or changing the radio station/music, all of which I HAVE done back when I was driving. I SHUDDER, I just shudder at the stupid things I did, the generally commonplace things I did that took my attention off the road for a second or so. Time that could have meant life or death, forever maimed and lives changed, if not for sheer stupid blind luck.
I may never get behind the wheel of a car again, but if I do, count on me being the safest person on the road at that time. I would hope, anyway. No one can predict what might happen from second to second, but at least I’m much more aware now and wouldn’t take driving for granted. I’d be 10 times more paranoid now than I was oblivious then.
I hope this mini-doc is the first of many, that more famous and cult directors get involved and make their own. This one didn’t have Herzog’s “stamp” on it, so there’s no reason to believe that others would. In other words, if Tarantino did one, he probably wouldn’t add snappy dialogue or hip music. There’d be no need and would be counterproductive. I think they’d all be straightforward and let the stories tell themselves. What they would do is bring their fans and the curious to each piece, like the way the OP, and myself, watched it because it was made by Werner Herzog.
I saw this after the title was edited. I can’t for the life of me guess why the OP was taken for spam. Could someone enlighten me please!
It was rather odd, but the Amish are rather odd and I commend the man for his kind words, especially for wishing the texter and his child a good future.
I titled it something like, “Werner Herzog’s texting documentary - Watch it free!” and it sounded like a kind of adware/malware link spam thingy.
I was trying to capture:
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It’s Werner Herzog so it’s quality.
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It’s about texting.
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It’s free on the internet.
Instead, it sounded like an advertisement.
While I’m not trying to rain on your parade, you do know the evidence that talking or even texting while driving causes accidents is rather unclear and mixed?
I think the mixed part comes from the problems coming from enforcing the rules, but this report points to a significant reduction in accidents when texting is banned.
As pointed out there are measurable levels of danger when doing texting while driving, the mixed results comes from not having an efficient way to continue to enforce the bans, so IMHO it is education and therefore documentaries like this one that are important to educate the people about the risks.
My ex’s nephew, a 26 yo or so, just finished his pharmacist’s training, 3 months away from his marriage was killed last year when a driver switched a CD, and swerwed into the young man’s lane. Frontal shock, my ex’s nephew was killed, his fiancee seriously wounded, the other driver got out almost without a scratch (he was driving a larger vehicle).
However, I can’t really blame the man. He wasn’t speeding, was alcohol and drug-free, etc…Just an instant of distraction, and nobody can avoid being distracted. But texting, drinking and driving, repeatedly not respecting traffic rules…are difficult to accept, let alone, I guess, forgive. It already enrages me, and I fortunately never lost someone close to an idiotic driver.
By the way, I agree that the documentary was a bit emotionless. I saw a similar Quebecois documentary about drunk driving some months ago on you tube, and it made a much stronger impression on me, possibly because they let the involved people speak more freely and naturally, and for a longer time.
And the road safety movies I found the most powerful were two long ads, one French about drunk driving one British or Australian about texting and driving that shared the same concept : they showed a whole accident from the moments before the event until the evacuation of the (surviving) victims by the emergency services (plus the police announcing his child’s death to a mother in the middle of the night in the case of the French one) [That was staged, not real accidents]
Given what I wrote about switching a CD resuting in death, I’ve a hard time believing that the evidences that texting while driving causes accidents are unclear and mixed.
Hmmm…Scratch that. I don’t need no fucking evidence. You know what you need both to text and to drive? Your eyes and your hands. You can’t possibly be texting and driving safely at the same time.
Agree. But from what I’ve read, and experienced myself (no, I won’t do it again), it’s neither the hands nor the eyes, but the brain (i.e., attention) which is the main factor. Well, attention plus eyes, that’s true (otherwise, it would be unsafe to listen to radio programs like “This Anerican Life,” or books on CD, while driving.)
Just a few days ago I was driving home from the store with my wife and kids in the car, down a straight, narrow two-lane road near our house with almost no shoulder and a railroad drainage ditch on our side of the street. We watched a car headed for us drift over into our lane and continue straight toward us without slowing down (we were both going 35-40 mph). I laid on the brakes and the horn at the same time and saw the driver, a young woman, casually look up from her phone and swerve back into her own lane as if nothing had happened. I was so pissed I almost did a U-turn to follow her – but I couldn’t come up with a plan past that so I continued home, shaking from the adrenaline. Fucking texters.
No, I didn’t know that. And in fact I would find it quite surprising. Do you happen to have a cite?
As someone who has driven a car and sent text messages (not at the same time), it seems to me fairly obvious that doing both at the same time would impair one’s ability to drive safely. I would need pretty convincing evidence to make me believe otherwise – probably not a study of texting bans (which is muddied by the question of how effectively they were enforced), but actual observations of people driving while texting which show they aren’t significantly impaired relative to a control group that drives without texting.
I would have been tempted to follow just long enough to get a license plate number, and then call the police. I’m not sure if anything would come from it, though.
Another request for a cite on this claim.