“No post, glance, email, search, or text is worth a life.” That’s the message from a powerful new car safety advert, which is made by an American telecommunications company and might just change the way you drive.
Showing the potentially deadly consequences of glancing at your phone while driving, Close To Home is the latest ad in AT&T’s latest It Can Wait campaign. It shows what can happen when you take your eyes off the road even for a second, reminding drivers that just a glance at a phone can result in fatal consequences.
In the four-minute full-length version of the ad, we are introduced to six characters going about their day – riding a bike, watering the garden, watching TV, discussing dinner plans. Their lives are irrevocably changed by the devastating consequences that take place when a mother who is driving with her young daughter in the car quickly glances at her phone to see the number of likes she has on a photo.
A statement on the company’s website reads, “Behind the wheel, everything can change in the blink of an eye. A post, a selfie, a text, a scroll, an email – one look is all it takes.”
Just recently, the chair of Ireland’s Road Safety Authority, Liz O’Donnell, said she believes the use of mobile phones while driving is now bordering on addiction.
Speaking ahead of the publication of RSA’s Annual Report, which is due out in the coming weeks, she warned about the increased danger posed by drivers who are distracted while on the road. “I truly believe this problem is getting worse, particularly the issue of distraction by mobile phones which for some borders on addiction.”
She also pointed out the RSA’s own research, which shows that as many as one in 12 road users use a phone while driving. A total of 195 lives were lost on Irish roads in 2014 – a four per cent increase and the second year in a row in which the annual road fatality figure rose.
Would the Close To Home ad, below, make you think twice about taking a glance at your phone while driving?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVnRcIXEqaU
