You have to give it to the people behind this ad: they're brilliant. They get right up to the edge of acknowledging the burden of road traffic injuries, but in a way that makes a car seem like the hero.
Is this not the perfect example of “if you don't like what's being said, change the conversation"? (I don't mean to make this entire post Mad Men reference, but the shoe fits....) The conversation should be cars vs. other safer, more sustainable forms of transportation. But for years, they've made it about cars versus "safer" cars.
"They survived" but if they hadn't been in the car, or hadn't had to spend so much of their time in the car, they never would have been at risk of a crash in the first place. And that's assuming those dents were made by other cars, not cyclists or pedestrians because I assure you, they didn't survive.
Can you imagine if we advertised "safer" cigarettes by showing pictures of resected lung tumors? Or "safer" asbestos by...I'm getting stuck on lung tumors here. How about safer guns by showing pictures of spent, bloodied bullets?
This is every bit as ridiculous. The question should be cars versus better forms of transit, instead they've successfully kept it cars vs. other cars.
So they spoon-feed us some sentimental junk food like this:
And our society is so auto-normative that we don't even ask questions.
The safest exposure is the one you never have--or the one you have only rarely, for long trips out to the country. The safest driving is less driving. That's the conversation we should be having.
A real "lucky man"? One who took the subway.
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