Bummer in the Summer

So have we seen the summer Drink Driving campaign yet? I ask because I haven't seen it (although I don't watch a huge amount of television) and the THINK! campaign calendar has a big TBC for the entire year under "drink driving". We are due a new campaign soonish under THINK!'s three-years-refresh system - although that's far from immutable, and the percieved success of Moment of Doubt might well persuade them to keep it. Mixed results for Adrian Schiller - on the plus side, he does give a good performance. On the minus side, who wants to be typecast as a flailing bellend?

So anyway, from 1992, here's the first summer-specific Drinking and Driving PIF, in which Hugo Speer (best known as the meat-packer from The Full Monty) dies horribly along with his wife Fiona Allen. The final shot is one the least compromising I've ever seen and, when I was a kid, caused my skin to shift several inches to the right every time I saw it, which, if I could help it, wasn't often. This was so succesful it was repeated in the summer of 1994.

Drink-driving had been mostly associated with Christmas until someone in the late eighties realised it actually kills - or killed, I don't know it the statistic still holds up - more people during the summer than at any other time. At first they stuck with poster campaigns - little A4 sheets depiciting a nice summer road with "What a Beautiful Day to Die" in calculatedy judgemental type in the centre of the picture, studded behind glass directly in your eyeline above every urinal in every service station in the country - or so it seemed. When the stats remained unacceptably high, they highlighted it with a major PIF campaign in 1992 - this one, duh - and then again in 1994, this time accompanied with a more direct service station piss-think poster campaign depicting, with the kind of black comedy long since replaced by earnestness, a wreck not dissimilar to Hugo Speer's with the words "It's SUMMERTIME Again!" in rainbow-coloured bubble writing overhead. There was also one - I'm pretty sure it mentioned the summer angle - depicting a glass of beer with a frontal shot of a car wreck inside it, presumably replacing ice. Do they still put Public Information Posters in service station toilets, judging you while you piss? I think it's a good idea, if unsettling. Personally, I'd pay pubs to use beermats displaying messages akin to those stark white-on-black posters and PIFs from the turn of the century, although in practice that would probably prove infuriating. I neither drink nor drive, though, so I don't care. In New Zealand they once had a campaign where posters were integrated into those undignified metal trough things in pubs, displaying the message "IF YOU DRINK, THEN DRIVE, YOU'RE A BLOODY IDIOT" when pissed upon, which is taking it to pretty hilarious extremes.

I'm going to add all these tag selections just for the hell of it.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• advert
• commercial
• PIF
• public
• information
• film
• service
• announcement
• drinking
• and
• driving
• wrecks
• lives
• Hugo Speer
• he dead
• Fiona Allen
• summertime
• inebriation
• car
• crash
• dui
• dwi
• despair
• death
• brutal
• killings
• oh
• no
• television
• tough guy
• sneak peek
• credits
• advertisement
• deleted scene
• television show
• sneak peak
• trailer
• movie
• talking
• interview
• science fiction

[astromonkey12]

I'm looking for a couple of Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives PIFs for my channel. Can you help me find "Mirror", "Real Lives", "Victim" and "Christmas Pudding"?

[Applemask]

@astromonkey12 Arrowsarchive point comme has most of them, although I still haven't seen "Mirror" since it was originally broadcast.

[Duvmasta]

It's Drunk Driving! Drunk Driving!!!

[Applemask]

@Duvmasta We don't call it that because it suggests you have to be actively inebriated to cause an accident.

[moksheebs]

@Applemask You're right. Some drivers are dangerous enough even though they only had a mug of booze.

Proves you don't need to drink a full keg to cause a drinking and driving accident.

[hotelmario510]

Well, that just ruined that wonderfully cheerful song for everyone.

[glunglun]

This one has always stuck in my mind. It strikes all the right chords, even though their mate seems to see it happening before it does. I suppose that's part of the message, but it's always bugged me a little. It should be revived, maybe even remade, but only if it's done shot-for-shot.

BTW, the doomed Hugo's wife is played by Fiona Allen.

[easportsbig899]

There's always a well placed tree...

[ILoveES33]

Yep, just yesterday. All I get is that creepy slowed down thing at the end & it gives me this sick feeling.