The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is kicking off National Distracted Driving Awareness Month with a 30-second ad illustrating how even one thoughtless time texting while driving can be deadly.
The ad, from The Tombras Group, draws you in with a slice-of-life scene featuring a few teens laughing and chatting in a car. The driver receives a text, looks at her phone and blows past a stop sign -- then, a truck broadsides her car. The action plays out in excruciatingly slow motion.
[seealso slug="att-documentary-texting-while-driving"]
A police officer then addresses the camera: "Nobody likes to be stopped by the police. But if I had seen her texting while driving and given her a ticket, it just might have saved her life."
As part of the push, the NTSB has also launched Distraction.gov, a website about texting and driving. Some 3,328 people were killed in "distraction-affected" crashes in the U.S. in 2012, a slight drop from 3,360 in 2011. An estimated 421,000 people were also injured in motor vehicle crashes involving a distracted driver, a 9% increase from 2011.
In 2006, Volkswagen ran an ad that bore similarities to the NTSB spot (below). The plot of VW's ad, however, had a much happier ending.