VW illustrates how dangerous texting while driving can be.

Texting While Driving: VW Drives The Message Home

VW illustrates how dangerous texting while driving can be.
Texting While Driving: Volkswagen drives the point home.

Volkswagen shows just how dangerous texting while driving can be by demonstrating to a crowded movie theater just how much can be missed in a blink of an eye by mixing high tech cellular gadgetry with big screen cinematography.

A New Batch Of Drivers Are Tempted By Texting While Driving

Ah June. The month that has more neophyte drivers hitting the streets than any other—all armed with mobile devices connected to excited friends who want to know how it feels to finally have a license supplying a never ending barrage of texting while driving temptation. As the newly licensed fledglings begin to venture ever further from their nests, they start making their way to their summer jobs, a day at the beach or lake, or head to a party via streets near you. You see them and their clumsy flapping on the road. They turn right in front of you because they haven’t learned to judge speed and distance yet. They stop between lanes trying to decide if they should go left or right. You hear the increase in the number of squealing tires at night. Most are burnouts as they show off for their friends, but more than you care to count leave you wait for the potential cacophony of rapidly compressing metal, plastic and glass that may follow. Isn’t June grand?

We try so hard to keep them safe. We do everything we can to avoid hearing that gut wrenching sound. We enroll them in driver’s ed. We make sure the wear their seatbelts. And we caution against speeding and drunk driving. In addition to our own warnings against speeding and drunk driving, we have nanny controls to prevent speeding and organizations like MADD and SADD to spread the gospel against drunk driving. But how much time do we spend talking to them about the act of driving itself? There’s no nanny control for texting while driving unless you take away their phone, but you want to be able to reach them. More importantly, they may need to reach you. Yet you still need to convince them of the importance of paying attention to the road every second they are behind the wheel and just how dangerous texting while driving can be.

There are already too many other distractions for a driver who has yet to find the best position to effectively drive a car from. (Hint: It’s not reclining so far back you’re practically sitting in the back seat and can’t see over the hood). When I was learning to drive, distractions were pretty much limited to the AM/FM radio, 8-track tape player, my friends, and the occasional bikini clad hottie walking near the beach. Nowadays, kids have all that, plus dual climate controls, satellite radio, CD-changers, mp3 players, navigation systems, speaker phone, and texting devices. Getting them to believe any of these things let alone texting while driving can impair their reaction time is a challenge. Granted, the average teenager can whoop my ass in any video game requiring more input than a black joystick with a red fire button offers, so it’s understandable that young adults today are even more prone to blow off their elders than we ever did when we were their age, especially when it comes to warning about multi-tasking and texting while driving. They know their hand-eye coordination is so much greater than ours, how can they possibly take us seriously?

Volkswagen Shows Movie Goers The Danger of Texting While Driving

But maybe if that warning about texting behind the wheel was presented in terms they could understand. That’s what Volkswagen is hoping to accomplish with a PSA they recently released showing just how quickly things can go wrong while driving. The PSA was shown in a theater in Hong Kong where a special device was employed that could ping every cell phone in the theater at the same moment. The film rolled depicting a car being driven down the road. A few seconds into the clip, the device was activated and as everyone looked down to check their message, the car crashed. They took their eyes off the screen for an instant and missed what happened that fast. This is exactly what could happen when texting while driving, not just to your new driver, but to anyone. It’s powerful stuff, and kudos to VW for putting it together.

Of course, VW can’t make your kids watch the video, nor can they make sure they get the point that texting while driving is bad. That’s up to you. They provided a great tool, now it’s up to you to use it. As your kids kick off their summer, and you pile on the safety advice about driving sober and how speeding kills to prepare them for a night of safe fun, remember to also prepare them for those split seconds that occur as they travel to their destinations and warn them about texting while driving. You successfully got them to driving age, now try and keep them around long enough to have kids of their own.

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