My first thought was 35 minutes? Way to long.
But I just sat and watched the whole thing, and I think it was quite well done. Better then any of the government made don't text and drive spots I've seen.
Famed German filmmaker Werner Herzog has teamed up with US mobile carrier AT&T to produce a short documentary film, warning of the dangers of texting while driving. The 35-minute film (embedded below) features frank and occasionally heart-wrenching interviews with drivers who were responsible for traffic accidents after …
What struck me was the generous forgiveness by both Amish victims families as well as the woman whose father was T-boned. What great examples of humanity they are.
Most of us would be looking for revenge, understandably, but these people have moved on.
A strange thing I noticed: The girl driver got off relatively light with no further strings attached. In NL you will pay for the rest of your life if you are not adequately insured. We are obliged by law to have a general liability insurance for starters. But when you drive without a valid license or the obligatory MV insurance package for instance, any insurance is void and you will still have to pay yourself all the extra costs the victim has to make to live, without a time limit.
I didn't watch the video, but insurance laws in the US are determined state by state. Some states do not require insurance, but most do. Driving without proof of insurance is illegal in my state, though if you don't want insurance you can post a $50,000 bond with the state (the amount is clearly inadequate, but the law is probably decades old from when $50,000 would probably cover almost any conceivable medical expenses for injuries you caused)
What happens to you money-wise after an accident, insurance or not, is largely determined by civil courts, not criminal. If I run someone over and injure or kill them, it is up to them (or their family) to sue me. If they choose not to, or my insurance is enough to pay the cost of the suit, that is the end of it. If the judgment is more than my insurance covers, I'm responsible for the rest, and the judge may assign some sort of payment plan if I don't have enough to cover the rest at the time.
The criminal courts are only concerned about whether you were breaking the law at the time of the accident, and they could for instance find both parties at fault legally (I was texting while driving, the guy I ran over was jaywalking)
It Can Wait was also the name of a massive fundamentalist Christian sexual abstinence program in the Southern States. It was in schools, on billboards and TV and radio. It was also horrible and did everything short of calling women who had premarital sex whores.
I guarantee people in the South are going to think AT&T is telling them to get married before they have sex.
I remembered this one on UTV growing up, Which always confused me at the time because I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was about and by the time I was old enough to understand they had stopped showing it.
As far as I could recall it was an advert for BT with machine guns, it wasn’t until I was able to find it on youtube and see it as an adult that it made sense
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i_p1mupPio
Shot from a GoPro or similar 50/60hz recording to give it that home-video feel.
Same basic scenario each time - driver in town/on motorway/wheverer.
Texts, fiddles with radio, does make up, having a playfight with a passenger (I've followed someone doing this, and immediately backed the fuck off as they weaved into the other lane - thankfully nothing there)...
As soon as they start doing it, something subtly changes up ahead - brake lights go on, kid runs out, whatever.
Use a careful mix of live action stunts and good CGI to show the aftermath in real time. Spare no details. Have a kids arm ripped off, something like that.
No warning of the advert containing potentially disturbing images, just a message at the end that says:
"This is why you should pay attention while in charge of over a ton of metal and glass capable of moving at high speed under your control. If this happens because you weren't paying attention, it's your responsibility"
The potential for catastrophe is quite real, why not show it as it is?
Steven R
That irish one is a bit like what I'm talking about. But shoot it with GoPros or similar 50/60hz cameras from fixed perspectives. No fancy camera angles, no zooming around to get a wide view etc.
Just switching from camera to camera, with some careful CGI to show pedestrian impacts. I'd vote against using CGI for vehicle collisions - cage 'em up and clonestamp the cages out (easier with fixed angles) and really smash the cars together and into physical objects. Feel free to use 'killer' cars with dummies and parts of the crash structure removed, etc.
Make it fast, make it real, make it horrifying. Make it fucking stick.
Steven R
" Best 'pay attention when driving advert' should be....
Shot from a GoPro or similar 50/60hz recording to give it that home-video feel.
Same basic scenario each time - driver in town/on motorway/wheverer."
New Zealand ran a bunch of adverts like this in the 1980s-early 90s. They were sickening and quite effective.
By the end of the 1990s they were running hitech adverts featuring matrix style slo-mo swoops - and those had almost no impact whatsoever.
Does this dude know he shares the name with the first RTS game I ever saw? Rare teutonic surname or not (surname also of a famous old school baseball manager but I digress) that game was revolutionary in a genre so lame that you instawin with tank rushes even decades later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzog_Zwei
I'm sure they are trained to drive and use the computers. Just like they are trained to drive in excess of the limit.
Except there is no training, at least in Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee and West Virginia. All those states cancelled their law enforcement driving programs in the early 80's. They aren't trained in driving at all anymore. Got a valid drivers license? Take six weeks of class and you too can be a uniformed officer of the law.
The "training" thing is bullshit anyway. Someone who says "I've been texting while driving to/from work every day since 2003" could claim to have more training than anything the police could have possibly had for typing on their dash computers but that doesn't mean they are driving safely.
There are many cities in the US (including mine) where police have been banned from pursuits because of all the carnage they've caused or too many near misses that worried people. It is one thing to be able to safely drive through city streets at high speed, it is another to do so when there is other traffic there, and pedestrians, even with lights and siren on your vehicle to warn them. Radio waves travel faster than cars.
Recently, Werner Herzog appeared as "executive producer" (I think that means he's gathering the money and opening doors) for The Act of Killing
Watching his "Aguirre" now (a movie project from 1972). 98% fresh on rottentomatoes
This one deserves an honourable (re)mention:
Also deserving of an honourable mention is the original Think Bike ad from 1975, presented by the late Edward Judd. I drive a car, I don't ride a bike, and I've never forgotten this ad from nearly 40 years ago. 47 seconds of low-tech brilliance.
And I've never forgotten "Julie knew her killer."
I couldn't forget it even if I didn't have a problem enforcing back-seat-passenger seat-belt wearing in a city/country where it is not much enforced even for the driver. It is the reason I won't even start the car until they put those damn belts on.