Hey you, yeah you with the cellphone in your hand and a steering wheel in the other, you’d be better off putting off that all-important text message about your dinner plans until you’ve pulled over and parked the car. We all know that sending a text message while driving can be worse than driving drunk – there are laws on the books in most US states that make it illegal to do so, in fact – but there’s evidence that most of you out there just don’t care enough about the potential dangers of texting and driving, or Oprah’s No Phone Zone campaign, to actually heed the letter of the law. So, hopefully the graphic video depicting a fatal car crash involving text messages and infant babies will change your mind.
The four minute long video you see here was created as a reenactment of what could happen to you if you continue to tap out text messages while driving a car. The video, which was put together by a police department in Wales, initially aired in the UK as an ad to dissuade reckless drivers from putting themselves and others at risk. It was so graphic that it took the Automobile Association of America Carolina’s Foundation for Traffic Safety President Tom Crosby about a year to get permission to let the ad air on TV in South Carolina.
The ad was cut into a 30-second clip and went live last week in South Carolina. The video shows a small car full of teenage girls doing their best to stay distracted from driving (fitting, seeing as how teens are least likely to put the phone down when driving). The end result? A horrific offset head-on collision with another car that really hammers home the dangers of texting while driving. If you’re still not convinced that this could happen to you, watch the video. We have to warn you, though, it’s graphic.
Oh, and not to make light of the dangers in this situation, but we bet the surviving girl in the video wishes she had an Android phone with voice-to-text capabilities. Jussayin’