Shocking TV ad aims to end 'uncool' image of seat belts

Published on Monday 3 November 2008 21:03

IMAGES of a driver's lungs being punctured in a car crash are featured in a harrowing new TV advert to encourage seat-belt use.

The sequence has been judged so graphic that it is being shown only after the 9pm watershed.

The campaign comes as Stewart Stevenson, the transport minister, told The Scotsman that one in six road deaths could have been averted if seat belts had been worn.

Road safety experts said some young drivers regarded seat belts as "uncool".

The latest TV advert, shown for the first time last night, features the immediate aftermath of a collision involving a driver travelling at 30mph without his seat belt on.

It shows, in slow-motion, the driver's rib cage puncturing his lungs and tearing the main artery from his heart as they continue to be propelled forward following the impact. The driver's airbag inflates, but is insufficient to save him.

Figures for deaths among road crash victims not wearing seat belts are not published, but the government said an average of 4,000 lives and 45,000 serious injuries a year are saved in Britain by seat belts.

Young men are least likely to wear them, along with motorists on low speed, short journeys on familiar roads.

The government said some drivers wrongly believed they did not need to wear a seat belt if their car had airbags.

An edited version of the TV advert will be shown before 9pm, while the 2.6 million campaign also includes radio and cinema adverts.

Sir Jimmy Savile, who starred in the Clunk Click, Every Trip TV adverts in the 1970s, welcomed the new campaign.

He told The Scotsman: "The government must have had new figures showing a worrying decline in the wearing of seat belts. "I see this at the receiving end, working as a volunteer porter at Stoke Mandeville Hospital (in Buckinghamshire].

"It takes two seconds to be thrown through a window, but two years to put your face back together."

Stewart Stevenson, the Scottish transport minister said: "Whether it is a serious or minor road accident, seat belts are proven to save lives.

"Despite this, some drivers and their passengers are still ignoring the advice and still not buckling up.

"That is an extremely dangerous approach and one which may result in the most tragic of consequences.

"I'd urge everyone to listen to the experts.Those who do no wear a seat belt are not only gambling with their own lives, they are gambling with the lives of every other passenger in that vehicle."