Most powerful commercial ever

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   christiansisterposted 12 years ago

   This is so alarmingly well made and very graphic. But, the message is so true. Please do not let small children view this.
   Watch and respond with what you think. I am not posting this link just to promote it. I think it is very important for people to see it. http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Z2mf8DtWWd8
   
   Curious to hear your response.

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      KristenGraceposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Wow.  I actually never saw that one before.  So much was going on - very upsetting.  I hope more people view that.
      
      Do you remember (or did you ever see) those commercials from about fifteen or so years ago when they would show a young child at some special event... like a birthday party, and then it would come up with a line like: Katelynn... Age 3... Killed by a drunk driver...
      
      Those commercials truly haunted me.

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      saleheensblogposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      i wish I had never seen it. I am just shocked

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      sandra rinckposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Crying my eyes out.  One of my best friends died a couple months ago, hit by a drunk driver.  She was 31.  She wanted to be a nurse, she was finishing nursing school.
      
      I had a friend in high school who killed a boy and mangled his own face.  He did six month and even though he cried and he has to go to the parents every year and tell them how sorry he is, he still does it.
      
      I worry every time I drive whether or not someone is going to think they are okay to drive and if one day my husband or daughter or another person I love will be their speed bump.
      
      Sadly, no matter how many commercials there are.  No matter how many free taxis there are... No matter how many people say, "I will come pick you up",  they wont stop doing it and I do hate alcohol for it.

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      kimberlyslyricsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Please do not take this as disrespectful in any means.  I am unsure but think I understand the word Powerful in your OP.
      
      Having been a broadcast producer globally now for over 20 years, commercials in all mediums I sadly will say this.  How many drivers do you truly believe stopped drinking and driving as this spots mandate presents it's objective?
      
      Scare tactics are enormous target group eye catchers, but as the drug program scared straight it has yet to work.  I wish it would.
      
      This spot went straight for shock value, does nothing for the critical stage of prevention.  Europe has 2 powerful spots with no drama, and very effective.  We know what happens in a drunk driving accident.  Usually death.  No surprise, no change, regardless.  All said and done, MADD has had the most consistent powerful, and creating awareness in all mediums. May they all keep it coming.
      
      I attend AA and am a firm believer active alcoholics are the target. 6,7,8 DUI's with more to come without arresting the usage.  My step mother wears orange as we speak and will for some time with her 3rd.
      
      Media is to impress you, as this spot did, poorly.  Is there anything at all here that creates a direction of thinking that even possibly would make you think twice before driving.  No.  Because there is nothing that gives hope of change.  Like it will never stop.  Seeing a guy in a head brace?  Blood?  etc, slow motion crashes?  Tell me something you have not seen before.  You can't.
      
      Focus groups and research have shown us over and over the most powerful form of a message that does create change, is sitting through a speaker meeting of a family member who has lost someone from a DD.  These groups are mandatory if you are charged with a DUI.  I have not had one but attend a number of these meetings and it is those moments that keep me thinking straight.
      
      Creatively It's in my blood to add it was really poorly directed, casting was not throughly thought out, art direction stuck to see how much they could get people to say omg!  Only my opinion this spot was way off strategy and the song that I promise they paid a fortune for in royalties will be the only thing you remember, if anything at all.
      
      There is hope, lets help each other
      
      ODAAT
      
      Have a safe 24 all
      
      
      Bless those taken

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         SomewayOuttaHereposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         ...your comments make a lot of sense KL...

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         christiansisterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I truly understand your point, but how many people would actually go to listen to those focus groups as opposed to the number of people who are willing to sit down and watch TV? Not many I would imagine.

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   Toby Hansenposted 12 years ago

   This ad is from my home State of Victoria, Australia.
   The TAC (Transport Accident Commission) have been spending millions our tax dollars on these ads for 21 years now.
   Think of how many more lives could have been saved if the State Government had spent that money on repairing and upgrading the condition of our roads.
   An ever better idea would have been to ban the car industry from producing vehicles that are capable of doing more than 200 kilometres an hour in a country where the highest speed limit is 110.

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      christiansisterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Kristen... No I didn't see those.
      
      Toby..Wow!! Can you really drive that fast there? That is mind blowing..

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         Toby Hansenposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         When I was a girl, the highway and freeway limit was 120 (75mph) kilometres an hour here in Victoria. Until recently, in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, there was no maximum speed limit outside a town.
         
         Now I believe that the maximum speed limit there is 110kph (69 mph).

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   timorousposted 12 years ago

   Here's some frighteningly graphic ads for workplace safety.  Produced a few years ago by WSIB, the Canadian Workplace Safety Inspection Bureau, I believe.  Chilling.
   
   Workplace Safety Ads

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      christiansisterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Ihave never seen that one before either. It is so chilling to see how quickly a normal day can turn into a tragedy. Alot of times we forget how fragile life is because of the repetition of things. We tend not to appreciate the moments we get to spend with people, Because we always think we will see them again. But, we never really can bank on it.  Thank ya'll for sharing!
      
      Tammy... I am heading to your hub to read it. Will get back with you.
      
      Lisa... I am so sorry about your experience. Thank you for sharing it. It is so sad that we act thinking everything will be fine. Because it has been fine so many times before.
      
      I am saying this knowing that I have had a DUI. About 18 years ago. I was so blessed that I did not injure or kill myself and/or someone else. I was going thru a very hard time, my exhusband had beat me up pretty bad. And then cut my throat. For about two months I felt I did not care about anything and I pulled a two month drunk. I cannot imagine how I would have been able to live with it, If I had hurt someone else because I was caught up in my depression. It is so sad and ruins so many lives in so many ways.
      
      I do not drink anymore (I never really liked it anyways, But, it did seem to kill the pain(for a moment.)
      
      But, for the Grace of God Go I...

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   Tammy Lposted 12 years ago

   Those images are very disturbing.  I even mentioned what happened to my sister when she was critically injured by a drunk driver in the hub I wrote about her.  I still remember seeing what was left of the car she was riding in.  Only by the grace of God, did she survive the accident.

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      Lisa HWposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Tammy L, I just read your Hub about your sister.    What a difficult thing for her and all your family to have to go through.

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   Lisa HWposted 12 years ago

   It is well made, although I didn't finish it.  It hit a little too close to home for me, because (as some people on here may have already seen me mention "zillions" of times), I survived one of those accidents.  My girlfriend, the driver, didn't.  We were hit by a speeding, drunk, young woman who was 27 years old.  We were both three/four weeks short of our 21st birthdays.
   
   If anyone saw the the photos of that car they'd never have believed anyone could ever have survived.  Almost the worst thing, though, was to see, next to the ripped open car, my girlfriend's shoe on the ground at night, next to the car.  Apparently, that one shoe fell off as they were taking her out of the car.  Worse than our accident, though, a year before, our other girlfriend's two brothers (15 and 16) and their friend (16) were drunk and speeding.  They hit a tree.  The car exploded into flames.  The older brother and the friend were killed.  The 15-year-old was badly, badly, burned and was awfully close to dying.
   
   I'm all for the graphic images.  Better people see those on the TV screen than live with having them show up in their head every so often for the rest of their lives (and that's only for the ones that are lucky enough to survive).  I've been over the loss of my friend and my own injuries for years and years - but not the anger over absolutely unnecessary, preventable, death of innocent people. I've actually always believed that our accident may have pushed my father over into having a fatal heart attack earlier than he otherwise would have, so there's that element to the accident as well.

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      Tammy Lposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      The sad thing about graphic images on TV is most viewers are so desensitized to those type images because of all the graphic images in movies and television programs.  There are some who cannot make the distinction between real and fantasy when it comes to images on TV.

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         christiansisterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Sadly, Probably true..

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   Tammy Lposted 12 years ago

   I'm afraid I led some of you to believe the title of my hub about my sister contains something about a drunk driver.  I am sorry for any misconceptions there.  The name of the hub is "The Life and Death of an AIDS Patient".

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   SomewayOuttaHereposted 12 years ago

   ...wow pretty intense commercial...it's a good one....gets to the point....my sis was hit by a drunk driver when she was on her way to school...i was about 4....i remember the devastation clearly...all of the emotion and me not quite understanding what happened at that moment...but i remember my mother's emotion clear as a bell...she was hit right in front of my family home...my mother saw it....she survived luckily....took more than a year for her to recover...i remember her in a body cast....and today she still experiences the pain from it...years later....

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      christiansisterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Wow, Thanks for sharing. I am glad that she pulled through especially for your mother's sake as much as hers.
      
      I think if we share more of these things, we start to wake up from our numbness (induced by the demands of this life) and remember how important the people in our lives are.

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         Tammy Lposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I agree wholeheartedly with you on that, christiansister.

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            christiansisterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Tammy L, I found your hub. Thank you for helping me find it. Your writing ability and courage are an inspiration.
            
            I worked as a nurse for many years and you would not believe how many people would be unwilling to mention a family member that has been afflicted with HIV. So afraid of the stigma.... So Sad.
            
            Love your strength. And it does not matter how she acquired the disease. It is a terrible disease that eats up good people.

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   Shadesbreathposted 12 years ago

   Hard core commercial that's for sure.  I'd call it over the top myself, even gratuitous.  I realize there's a view on it that thinks "if it saves one person, it was worth it" but I would argue that it won't save anyone because it's too gratuitously violent and even sentimental to be shown with enough frequency to have the impact it wants.  It defeats its own purpose.

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      christiansisterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I hope that is not true. It worked for me. When I went thru EMT school. I started thinking more about careless decisions, because I was faced with the grim results of them regularly.

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      Lisa HWposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I think the commercial is longer than most people have patience for. 
      
      The biggest reason there's such a problem getting that message into people's thick skulls is the young, youthful, and/or stupid thinking that "it won't happen to me".  That's just there in most people unless/until "it" happens to them.
      
      It doesn't help, either, that there's their argument, "People drink and drive all the time,  and that doesn't happen to them."  They're right.  The numbers of people it doesn't happen to far outnumber even the thousands that are killed in the US alone. So, the reality that "most of the time" people drive drunk and get away without a horror story fuels that belief that nothing will happen.  It goes back to the thing that it "only happens sometimes", and the "it won't happen to me" thinking includes the belief that "it" is a matter of unlikely odds.  On top of it, the arrogance of young, youthful, stupid, or impaired thinking means people think, "I won't let that happen.  I know what I'm doing."
      
      I'm not sure even the most effective commercial can do more than get people at least talking about it.

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         Shadesbreathposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Yep. Teenagers already know that drunk driving kills people.  Making them cry for five minutes with a hyper-sentimentalized commercial will, well, make them cry for five minutes.  Then they will go back to being teenagers. They go back to being invincible. There is a reason governments have been using teenagers to fight their wars for thousands of years, and it's not just because they have lots of energy and youthful strength.

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   Lily Roseposted 12 years ago

   Wow...I've never seen that before either.  I agree to not let young children watch it, but it may be a good idea for older kids to be shown this in school.  I lost a cousin to a drunk driver several years ago and another cousin died in a car accident when he himself was under the influence many years ago.  It's just not worth it...

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    LondonGirlposted 12 years ago

    I still remember very clearly the TV advert in the mid 1980s here in the UK, "Don't Die of Ignorance".
    
    the govt. produced a public health leaflet about AIDS, and sent a copy to every household. The advert encouraged people to read it carefully:
    
    http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/film … e_aids.htm

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    Home Girlposted 12 years ago

    We need, no - MUST HAVE more of these! And about drinking and smoking! We have so many smokers in Canada, it's not even funny! People say, "I can quit any time." It's B.S.! People have no idea how addictive smoking is! You'll be in struggle with cravings for the rest of your life. Same with alcohol. It can turn you into a monster,to a broken invalid, do you need that?

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    LondonGirlposted 12 years ago

    Just wondering, what happens if you're convicted of drink-driving in the USA?
    
    Here in England & Wales, it's a minimum 12 months ban, plus fine and costs, for a first offence. For second offences, a minimum driving ban of 3 years. Repeated offences and very high levels of alcohol in blood, breath or urine mean prison.

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       christiansisterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       each state has different laws regarding the penalties for DUI. They range from place to place. They can start with a fine and community service and build from there. It would mostly depend on...
       #1 Who you are
       #2 Who you know
       #3 The severity of the situation involved
       #4 How many times you have been convicted for the offense
       
       and several other factors. But, it does seem to be getting more strict with stiffer penalties.

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    LondonGirlposted 12 years ago

    Do you not get banned from driving for a time?

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       christiansisterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       Sometimes no sometimes yes

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    prettydarkhorseposted 12 years ago

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c81eRD2v0FY

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