You could learn a lot from a dummy. (click) Buckle your safety belt.
The Crash Dummies
is a series of American PSAs by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that ran on television, radio, and magazines in the '80s and '90s. The success of the PSAs would eventually lead to a toyline as well as a cartoon.
The commercials feature Vince (voiced by Jack Burns) and Larry (voiced by Lorenzo Music), two talking crash test dummies who demonstrate the importance of wearing seat belts while in a car through their slapstick antics.
This PSA provides examples of:
- Achievements in Ignorance: Vince at one point steals a car to avoid a crash test and drives for several miles on a freeway before realizing he doesn't actually know how to drive.
- Amusing Injuries: From crashing into walls to getting flattened, this happens all the time for Vince and Larry in the name of getting people to wear safety belts.
- Double-Meaning Title: The "Dummies" in the title refer to Vince and Larry as both crash test dummies and as idiots.
- Drives Like Crazy: One PSA features a cab driver who spends the entire video driving forwards while looking backwards.
- Head Crushing: In one of the original PSAs, Vince took off his own head and put it in a press machine to demonstrate "your head when you don't wear a seatbelt". The press burst his head into little bits that were still able to talk.
- Hurricane of Puns: Happens at least once a commercial.
- Now You Tell Me: At the end of this PSA.
- Pulling Themselves Together: Being crash test dummies, they frequently lose limbs.Larry: Hey, Charlie, looks like you could use a shoulder to cry on.
Charlie: There's one in here somewhere. - Restored My Faith in Humanity: Whenever Vince feels that the crash testing isn't making a difference, Larry points out that people are buckling up more which gets Vince back in.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Several commercials have Vince trying to get out of the crash dummy business, only to get back to it with some words of encouragement from Larry.
