It’s a great speech, though somewhat undermined by the fact that you’re dead for part of the first second after impact.

I do like this commercial for seatbelts:

I remember my father describing to me a commercial about life jackets. It involved a couple of kids sitting on a boatzoomed-in like, holding each other and looking scared. The camera pans out, and you see that they are alone on a boat and their father is floating dead in the water. The argument being “if not for yourself, then for your children.”

It’s a pretty solid concept. One of the effects that fatherhood has had on me is a greater degree of safety-consciousness. Which is kind of a weird way to look at it, but it sort of feels like I don’t have the right to die stupidly, as much as I used to.


Category: Road, Theater

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21 Responses to HCW: Drive Safely!

  1. Mr. Blue says:

    Hurm. Getting married didn’t mean that for you?

  2. Peter says:

    Jack Webb’s deadpan delivery is vital to the first ad’s effectiveness. With almost any other actor it would have come across as ludicrous. Like this Canadian workplace safety commercial, which was meant to be shocking but has become a target for ridicule and parody (as well as winning the award for Most Obvious Use of a Stunt Performer).

  3. Kirk says:

    For what it’s worth, my seatbelt latch kept coming undone. When it would do it, it would happen in just the first mile or so. I’d lean forward a little, and “click”, it would pop out. I’d have to click it back again.

    I ended up curing it with a squirt of WD-40. It’s embarrassing, how long it took for me to get around to it though.

    I probably mentioned it, but I was in a crash the day after 9/11. My old Chevy Caprice got totalled, but I was okay. I actually remember getting throwing against the belts, just like a crash-test dummy.

    My glasses ended up in the back seat!

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