My oldest son will be able to get his driving permit on his next birthday. Something that simultaneously thrills and frightens me. He is a good kid. He is responsible. He has never given me any reasons to doubt his judgement. But still he is a kid and kids do dumb things.
Teenagers by their very nature think that they are invincible. And that is at the core of what frightens me.
This week I came across this video. I think many of you have probably already seen it. It is an extremely graphic representation of a car accident that occurs when a teenage girl is texting not paying attention to the road. It reminds me of those scared straight videos from the late 1980’s which were to scare teenagers from drinking and driving.
Warning: it is graphic and loud, so you might want to make sure little ones are otherwise occuppied before you watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGE8LzRaySk
What do you think of the PSA? Would you show it to your teenager? or do you think that it is too graphic?
I will let my teenagers see the video, but I think that more important than trying to scare them is to model good behavior and to not text on your own phone while driving. Yes, I think it is graphic, but honestly not anymore graphic than many of the movies that the see.
I think is it good as long as the parents watch with the child and discuss it afterwords. In NC, there is a new law: no texting while driving. Cell phone use is still legal, but the bill is in the works to fix that situation.
The graphics are meant to “shake” things up (sorry), and open communications between teens and parents. In that area, they succeeded. Kudos!
Comment by Claire — August 27, 2009 @ 12:19 pm
I’d let them. But I also remember seeing “Mechanized Death” in Driver’s Ed about 30 years ago, and the kids laughing and applauding each scene of gore, and those clips were from real car accidents. So it may stick with them, but they’ll probably STILL think they’re immune, in typical teen fashion. :-p
Comment by Brigitte — August 28, 2009 @ 6:10 am
I have no problem with it. My 7 yr old saw some of it on the news. She told me about it in detail, but didn’t seem bothered by it. Although she has been screaming at me for awhile now to STOP! twittering on Twitter dot com. I will say that it has scared me straight & I stopped twittering and all other phone use while driving.
Comment by SoMo — August 28, 2009 @ 1:21 pm