"One of the most powerful public information films ever made"

There has been a long-running debate over the years in road safety and advertising circles about the merits of road safety films which try to get the message over by shocking the audience with the impact of accidents. The main reason for doubting the effectiveness of such adverts is the question of whether the audience they need to persuade is largely made up of people who don’t believe an accident will happen to them.

It’s rather like the debates over crime: is lengthening jail sentences an effective deterrent to crime or is the issue that people don’t think they’ll be caught (or just don’t think) and so longer sentences don’t work? And as in the fight against crime, so in the road safety world this issue is one that continues to be debated.

That said, if shock does work a remarkably and graphic advert made in Gwent for just £10,000 should be hugely effective. The Guardian gives some background:

It was made for just a few thousand pounds, stars unpaid student actors and was designed to warn youngsters in a corner of south Wales about the perils of texting while driving.

They may not seem the obvious ingredients for international success, but the four-minute film made by Gwent police has become an internet phenomenon, which has now been seen by millions of people and featured on TV news channels in the US.

Though, until now, it has been unheralded in the UK, the film has fuelled debates about road safety and prompted people from India to Canada to contact the Welsh force to describe how affected they have been by the images.

In America the advertising guru Donny Deutsch said it may be one of the most powerful public information films ever made and its disturbing content has been pored over by the likes of the Washington Post, CNN and Time magazine.

Here’s the film: