Texting and talking over the phone is indeed one of the biggest causes for road accidents nowadays. For some reason, however, people think that ‘texting a small message’ doesn’t make a difference. And they really don’t understand why it’s dangerous until the day when a small lapse of focus leads them into carnage. It really happens that way, whether you believe it or not.
In an effort to help curtail one of the main culprits of distracted driving — texting while behind the wheel — BMW said it will launch a national advertising campaign to fight the habit.
The campaign is called “DON’T TXT & DRIVE,” which is a play on the abbreviated texting language. The commercial shown above is especially compelling. The ad shows several children and the great lengths their parents will go to secure their safety. The entire commercial is pretty happy-go-lucky until the final scene, when a mother who has fastidiously secured her young toddler into a child-safety seat ends up being distracted by her chirping mobile device, with presumably deadly results.
Another ad, which will appear in magazines, shows a distracted driver with a smartphone in one hand and the other hand on the wheel. The phone’s screen shows a dot-matrix outline of a child darting into the street after a ball. Ads will appear online, in print and on radio as well, all of which is set to run this month.
The ads are supposed to lend awareness to the hazards of distracting driving. In 2009, nearly 5,500 people were killed in crashes involving distracted drivers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. NHTSA also found that nearly 87% of teens admit to texting while driving.
What do you think of the BMW ad? Is it too much or not enough?
