The Dangers Of Distracted Driving (Psas)

Distracted driving can have many forms. It can be texting, drinking, smoking, talking on the phone, looking for something in the car, and several others. All of these distractions can be taken care of by the actual drivers, but only some of them can be covered in Public Service Announcements. These PSAs typically focus on the horrific consequences of drinking and texting while driving. Several PSAs have been known to purposefully tug on heartstrings by showing the distraught family, or the poor pet who now has no owner. But rarely do these PSAs actually do anything to minimize the distracted driving. People remember the whimpering animal more than the actual material covered in the PSA. The PSAs that do show the unpleasant details of distracted
driving are remembered more clearly, but for the wrong reasons. The purpose of PSAs is to inform people of the issue and tell them of the rewards of acting on the information, such as a longer life; PSAs should not be focused on guilt tripping and nauseating the audience by showing horrible crash scene footage. By moving away from actual information being given, the effectiveness of the PSA is decreased to the point of ineffectiveness.
The most important part of PSAs is establishing a clear message.
Unfortunately, many PSAs send mixed signals, especially alcohol and distracted driving PSAs. The PSAs will focus on one specific element, such as focusing on how texting friends is not as important as many teens would believe. But often times pulling up a map on your phone can be just as distracting while driving, if not more so. Distracted driving is not just limited to teenagers and it’s certainly not limited to just wanting to find the perfect emoji to send to a friend. Not only that, but it is much more difficult to hold true to the claim of “never text and drive” instead of “don’t make a habit of texting and driving.” The costs of texting and driving are much easier to ignore if a person has never done it before or seen an accident occur because of that. A study done on the effectiveness of American PSAs found “the likelihood a media campaign succeeds increases substantially when the target behavior is one-off -- like getting screened for breast cancer or vaccinated against disease -- rather than something that requires habitual maintenance, like diet or exercise” (“Are Public Service Announcements Effective?”), or in this case, constantly refraining from texting and
driving.
While distracted driving PSAs have good intentions and many of them make the effort of including legitimate, informative information, this information is useless by itself. Like with cigarette and anti-smoking PSAs, the information they give is nothing new to their audience, but it will still be disregarded. Possible reasons may include the short-term benefit being worth the long-term cost (such as sending off an important message on the highway or lessening their stress by smoking one more cigarette) and the information becoming normalized to many viewers. While the first time a PSA is seen involving particularly horrific imagery may be memorable, by the time the third or tenth one is seen the effect is lessened as the routine is now familiar.
Public Service Announcements are still necessary and likely will be for several more years. While there is effort being put into them, the effort is becoming more and more misguided as the actual information slips through the cracks in favor of making them more relatable, and losing their audience in the process. There is not enough work being put into making these Public Service Announcements truly effective and the little work that is there tries its utmost to undermine itself at times.