Archive for the ‘Traffic safety films’ Category

VicRoads in Australia has been engendering all sorts of controversy for their “Don’t be a Dickhead” (yes, I’m serious) series of traffic safety adverts, as pictured above. There’s a lot of discussion in the article about which ads “work” better, which may be beside the point, as there’s scant evidence that road safety PSAs, no matter how clever or humorous or offensive or shocking, work at all (all those decades of bloody safety films for young drivers didn’t change the death rate — what has worked is controlling their exposure to driving and raising the driving age). Changing social mores is one important part of effecting road safety improvements, but whether PSAs can do this — in, say, the face of weak legal consequences — is another question.

And I had no idea “ginger” was pronounced with a hard ‘g’ down Australia way.

(thanks Richard)

(Thanks Alan)

I’m always fascinated by the U.K. Highway’s Code — not just the sheer amount of material one must absorb for the exam, but the very idea of a national code, which eliminates the weird comparative quirks among state laws here — even though the roads, drivers, and traffic environments are essentially the same (those states where you can drive at 14, a relic of family farm life, even though in places like Iowa agribusiness has taken over and true farm kids are much fewer; or the patchwork quilt of texting/talking laws) — as well as different driver training regimens, not to mention those awkward moments where a driver with multiple DUIs in one state gets one in another state and goes unpunished. My sense too is that the Highway Code as a cultural concept looms larger in the U.K. than our driving laws and training regimen does here (it’s not something much considered once one has the license). In any case, thanks to Chris for the video tip.

One can’t help but wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t had a running start. Given that the other pedestrian signal was red, presumably he had the green.

(Thanks Mikael)

Talking to David Cronenberg a little while back about J.G. Ballard, I somehow had 1960s era crash testing on my mind. And YouTube obliges. I also couldn’t help be drawn back to the archival images of the nuclear testing of domestic architecture (and its inhabitants) that I wrote about in my previous book, Survival City; the style, and the eerie slow-motion contortions of the test dummies, are curiously consonant.

Helmut, a German traffic psychologist working in Belgium, sends this example of wry, clever Low Countries humor.

They really get the tone of these things so right.

From the U.K.’s always provocative Think! series.

At a time when hip kids across the world are spurning the joys of automobile ownership, this social reprobate blows a gasket at receiving an inferior ride for his birthday. I would expect nothing less from the offspring of Hummer owners, of course.

(via Streetsblog)

Well, speaking of road factors and human factors and all that, here’s this campaign from New Zealand.

(thanks Warren)

Because even in the deadly serious business of road safety, there is a need for humor. In case you don’t recognize it, it’s Withnail and I, featuring the fantastic Richard Grant.

In an English mood lately, this one features none other than Darth Vader — e.g., David Prowse (and ironically, there’s an R2D2 ripoff). That kid in the second film looks a bit to me like an older version of “Danny” in The Shining.

Have you SPLINK-ed Lately?

As Joe Moran explains:

In the early 1970s, the Green Cross Code was promoted with the famously impenetrable acronym, SPLINK, based on the random selection of words from the code (safe, pavement, look, if, near and keep). A TV ad showed a group of youngsters crossing the road successfully and shouting the acronym at the top of their voices, perhaps in the forlorn hope that this would make it easier to remember. Jon Pertwee, who had just stopped playing Doctor Who, then said hopefully to the camera: ‘Now we can all remember the Green Cross Code: SPLINK!’

Watching this film — narrated by Jimmy Stewart — I couldn’t help but think all those kids shown in the beginning grew up and moved to Brooklyn, where they now drive the same way. And of course, these kids today would be busily texting in their Ritalin order while driving. These kind of traffic safety programs (or driver indoctrination programs?), whatever their good intentions, have shown to have essentially zero effectiveness, and are thus largely a thing of the past.

Via the superb Prelinger Archives.

Again, not an official safety film, but here’s a “greatest hits” of collisions between a tram (in Houston, I believe) and a series of cars. Most of these seem to clearly involve negligent or outright illegal acts by drivers, but the video serves as a very effective kind of warning: It is in fact quite possible to not see something as large as the train that stretches behind you in the rear-view mirror. The mishaps could be any combination of mirror blind-spot, an expectancy issue (odd given the bollards or raised bumps), or simply not bothering to look before making a turn.

(Horn honk to Dan)

Well, not so much a safety film as a revenge fantasy for some beleaguered neighborhood residents (audio in German).

The rubber hits the road, via Scotland.

Just the facts, m’am. Sgt. Joe really could break it down. Some of the science has changed, but not of course the fundamental physical forces.

I’m trying with difficulty to remember the last “speed-themed” advertisement I saw in the U.S.