Aug 25, 2009 8:09 pm US/Eastern
British Texting While Driving PSA Shocks & Sickens
(CBS4)
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Local drama students from Wales perform in the texting-while-driving PSA.
You Tube
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The new public service announcement warning teens of the perils of texting while driving is violent, bloody and graphic
You Tube
A new public service announcement out of England about the dangers of texting while driving is getting strong reactions because of its extremely graphic content.
The PSA is being shown to high school students in England.
The video shows three young girls in a car. The driver is trying to send a text message when she gets in a major accident with two other cars. While giggling with friends over the text message, the driver swerves into oncoming traffic and is involved in a head-on collision before a third vehicle T-bones her car.
Doesn't sound too bad when you're reading about it but the video is explicit in its gruesome details. There's shattered glass, plenty of blood and you can even hear bones breaking. In another vehicle, a small child cries for her dead parents to wake up.
The teenage driver, the one who was texting, is seriously hurt and her two friends are killed.
Russ Fowle from Wilton Manors knows that video is graphic, but he figures it's right on point. "People texting in cars," he says, "you're driving a two-, three-thousand pound bomb that's hitting other people and killing them."
Fowler lost his good friend Nick Pendergast last year when a texting driver ran a red light in Fort Lauderdale. "It's shocking to think a 25-year-old man loses his life because somebody found it more important to let somebody know they were on their way over or something."
The city of Parkland is interested in the video. Commissioners will see it next month when the commission will consider implementing its own ban on texting.
CBS4's Ted Scouten showed that video to several drivers in Parkland. They agreed the video was graphic, but got the message across. "I want to take this into schools and show it to all the kids to see this," said Joanne Young.
Her 18-year-old daughter thinks because of its graphic nature, it will grab the intended audience. "You see more disturbing video on television and movie theaters," said Brittany Young. "I think today, in the 21 century, the whole legion of desensitized children of today, they need something that's so disturbing, like this, to reach them, to send the message."
The PSA, which runs more than 4:00 minutes in length in order to get the important message across, has only been released in the UK but has been posted to YouTube.
The video is graphic and may be offensive to some viewers so view it at your discretion. To view the video in full,
click here.
Some wonder if young drivers in this country could also benefit from seeing the graphic video, or if the violence is just too much.
More than 1 million people have viewed the hard-hitting PSA on YouTube to date.
CBS4's Lisa Cilli contributed to this report.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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