PSA Reflection

When I learned that we were going to be doing a project on a mock Ad council public service announcement I was pretty excited to be able to do a project on an important subject that related to me. When looking on the Ad Council website I immediately knew that I wanted to do a project on “Youth Reckless Driving”. It was a subject that I could relate to, as I know a lot of people who drive in such a manner, and one of my friends from middle school was killed on Highway 84 last year while out on a drive in his dads BMW. The text only ad was pretty easy for me. I immediately knew that I wanted to make a fake speed limit sign with “kills” in replace of the “limit” and the actual number of deaths instead of “65”. And for the other three pictures I knew I could have some fun with them. For the first picture I drive down to the Burlingame Police Department and asked the sergeant on duty if I could take a picture of myself pulled over in my own car, with his car and lights going in the background. He, being a Serra graduate, was extremely willing and helpful. This was by far my favorite picture, as I think the emotion is right on, and I’ve even had several people think that it was actually real. For my next picture I took a shot of the gauge cluster for a 2011 BMW M3. It’s a very aggressive, technical dash so I wrote the text, “Tempted? … Take it to the Track.” And for my last photo I just had a little fun kicking up some dust in my 1986 Mustang GT; while probably driving a little too recklessly myself.

Youth Reckless Driving Prevention PSA

Youth Reckless Driving Copy

Throughout our nation’s late history, reckless driving has been the number one killer of teens. Since the 1950s Hollywood has been glorifying the acts of aggressive driving and racing. And, despite unprecedented attempts to stop reckless driving among our nation’s youth, it still kills over 5,000 teens every year. More and more states are now making teens go through graduated driver’s licenses which force more rigorous driver training and education, and getting a learners permit’s where they must drive with their parents for the first six months, as well as not being allowed to transport any of their friends for their first year of licensure. Many states, like Michigan and South Carolina have reported deaths among teens drop by over 25 percent. Although, we still need to take more and more drastic efforts to eliminate reckless driving, specifically among teens.