A Public Service Announcement video created by a British police department features a dramatization of an accident caused by a teen motorist who’s texting while driving. The YouTube video has gone wildly popular with over a million hits, but has also generated plenty of controversy because of its graphic content.
The video was made by the Police Department of Gwent in Wales, in response to the growing number of accidents linked to drivers texting at the wheel. It is gripping, and very graphic. This isn’t a sanitized "Don’t Text While Driving" message – there’s plenty of blood everywhere, and the video does a great job of showing the consequences of texting at the wheel.
The video has gone viral, and has generated controversy for its graphic scenes. There have been concerns about whether teenagers, who the video targets, can handle the blood and gore that’s on the screen. News media in this country too have featured the story, but as we write this, not one television station has agreed to air the PSA for American audiences.
As experts have said, we are currently at a crossroads of sorts. Our tolerance towards cell phone use while driving is exactly where the attitude towards drunk driving was in the eighties, or where seat belt non-usage was a decade ago. Our attitudes towards these issues have changed dramatically since then, and as a public, we are rightfully angry when motorists drive under the influence, or endanger their own lives but not buckling up.
We need to develop that same intolerance towards text messaging while driving, and, in fact, all kinds of cell phone use behind the wheel. Georgia has some of the most backward cell phone laws in the country. We don’t even ban hand held devices, except for school bus drivers.
As Atlanta personal injury lawyers, we have aggressively warned of the dangers of texting while driving and even of talking on cell phones while driving.And we have seen the accidents caused by such negligence.