OTHER OPINIONS Explicit, but maybe effective
Posted: September 8, 2009 at 6:45 a.m.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The video is shocking and makes your heart race: A girl distracted from driving by texting on her cell phone crosses the center line and runs headon into an oncoming car, then is rammed by another car. The video takes you inside her car, and with computer animation shows her friends' heads crashing into the windshield and windows, then shows the fatal, gory aftermath.
It's disturbing. It's meant to be.
The video, produced by a local police department in Wales, was created for use in schools there. But an excerpt got posted on YouTube, and now it has gone viral, with more than 4 million viewings.
It's a controversial approach.
But we applaud it as one more tool in the toolbox for convincing teens, and all of us, of the dangers of texting while driving. Some safety advocates question whether graphic scenes are the best technique.
That shouldn't be the onlyapproach - humor, reason, technology, laws and emotion are others - but if this video strikes fear in the heart of even one person, and we're sure it has, it might save lives.
There's no debate about the extreme dangers of texting while driving. A Virginia Tech study confirmed that this summer. Truckers' risk of a wreck was 23 times higher than when not texting, researchers found.
Drivers typically spent five seconds looking at their electronic device in the moments before a crash - an eternity at any speed. Numerous studies have shown that drivers know it's dangerous, but do it anyway.
Legislation helps, but ultimately each driver has to make his own choice. That's why the Welsh video might pay off.
Drivers know it's dangerous, but need something more to quit. The images from this video linger, and make you think twice.
Opinion, Pages 4 on 09/08/2009
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