Public Service Announcements (or PSAs as many of you may know them) come in two varieties.
Nice, friendly ones that try to get you thinking about the issue in question by making you feel good and, hopefully, more agreeable.
Aaaand the other ones, which more often than not compete with most horror movies as the cause of childhood trauma. Hell, even adulthood trauma for that matter.
Driving PSAs are typically in the latter camp, but some approaches are a bit more, uh, 'hardcore' than others with what they'll show you. Here are a few of the most nightmare-inducing automotive PSAs from around the globe.
GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING
Before we start, just a quick disclaimer. It goes without saying that some of these are pretty gnarly, and even though they're all staged short films, they are designed to make you uncomfortable. So, if you don't like heavy content, or you find these kinds of ads triggering, it's probably best to click away and read about '80s cartoons instead. Or even a less-confronting and infinitely more hilarious safe driving film from the '50s.
Okay, all good? Great. Let's start with something relatively easy.
The Importance of Paying Attention - U.S.A.
This one's animated! Yay! How could anything animated be at all confronting?
Oh... Oh no.
Now this one's obviously surreal, but that doesn't make it any less, well, 'icky'.
That short, by Ford, was animated by Bill Plympton. If you want more of that style of animation you should check out some of his other work, such as 'Hair High' - a movie he wrote, directed and animated himself.
Mistakes - New Zealand
New Zealand has offered up some really nicely made road safety PSAs recently. The 'Legend' ad is excellent, and it's really worth watching if you haven't already seen it.
It's funny, it gets the message across and it has an ultimately positive message.
So, it makes sense that it would be followed up with a soul-crushing conversation between two drivers, pre-accident.
Wait, what -
The most affecting part about 'Mistakes' is that it avoids the usual tropes of safe driving PSAs, that accidents are always caused some hooligan who consciously makes bad driving decisions.
Instead, by pointing out that nobody's perfect, it makes the situation a lot more real. It's the living embodiment of "I don't know what happened, they just pulled out in front of me" and that's truly scary. Even though it was made in New Zealand, the ad has also been run on television in Australia by Transport for New South Wales – the message, it seems, is universal.
Just Slow Down - Canada
If I was to mention 'driving' and 'Winnipeg' to you, there’s a chance you'd remember this scene from 'The Simpsons'.
What you're probably not thinking of is 'horrifying PSA' and yet, here we are.
In 2011 the Winnipeg Police Service ran an ad called 'Just Slow Down', featuring a dad bragging to his co-worker about how he never gets speeding tickets because he knows where all the cameras are. It also features his two kids, and an unrelated teenage girl hanging out with her friends.
Buckle up for this one.
A lot of these ads will cut out after the accident happens. But this one goes into the full aftermath and it's something else.
Again, by humanising the driver that caused the accident, the ad hits us harder. This isn't some villain who was racing a friend, this is just a kid who obviously feels remorse and horror at what's happened and will have to live with that for the rest of their life.
Oh man... I'm bumming myself out.
Literally everything by the TAC in the '90s and '00s - Australia
The Transport Accident Commission (TAC) has a bunch of resources relating to road safety and traffic accidents. It is also responsible for a bunch of ads that, if you've ever watched TV in Australia, traumatised you for life.
Maybe it was part of their 'Fatigue Kills' campaign, featuring a young couple and a Kombi:
A dude who has a choice between a powernap or a Michael Bay-esque inferno:
And a family and a river:
Or maybe it was a part of the infamous "If you drink then drive, you're a bloody idiot" campaign:
No matter what ad it was, one thing remains clear throughout: the TAC does NOT mess around when it comes to showing you the reality and consequences of unsafe driving.
Although even the TAC has nothing on...
The Faster the Speed, the Bigger the Mess - Ireland
Ireland has some kinda weird and incredibly hardcore PSAs.
There’s 'Thoughts', which feels kind of goofy, until the end when it steps on you:
'No Excuse' which continues the theme of incongruous pop song overlaying horrifying imagery:
The ad known as 'Classroom' aired in 2014 and focused on the statistic that since 2000 an entire kindergarten class of children had been killed in speeding related accidents. And also, rather bizarrely, featured an acoustic cover of 'Sweet Child o' Mine':
But the real kicker from Ireland is 'The Faster the Speed, the Bigger the Mess'. This ad is like a combination of all the most confronting parts of every other PSA you've seen. Horrifying imagery, emotional pain and a good, hard look at the consequences of your actions:
Okay, well... that was heavy. If you've made it to the end of this then, congratulations? I guess?
Honestly I'm not feeling great. I need to watch puppies for a while.
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