An Aesop that is really important is that "dangerous driving" is really dangerous. This trope usually comes into play in a Very Special Episode on driving safely. A character may be severely injured (at least for the duration of the episode) or killed as a result of taking chances behind a steering wheel, or as the result of another character's bad driving decision.
Many of these are aimed at younger drivers, seen (with some justification) as being more likely to engage in risky driving behavior. However, older demographics have always gotten hit with the "don't drive drunk" message, and are getting more of these storylines as other distractions behind the wheel such as cell phones become more commonly used by older drivers.
Sub-Trope of Scare 'Em Straight. Sister Trope to Fantasy Helmet Enforcement.
Contrast with Badass Driver, Drives Like Crazy, and Driver Faces Passenger.
Examples
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Advertising
- American Honda Presents DC Comics Supergirl was a 2-issue comic series made to teach people about safe driving, especially the proper usage of seat belts.
- Burma-Shave's original signs did this in grimly tongue-in-cheek style. Example: "A Miss/A Car/A Kiss/A Curve/He Kissed The Miss/And Missed The Curve."
- The infamous British Public Service Announcement Julie Knew Her Killer, which is about wearing seat belts in the backseat. Sounds a bit silly, but you won't be laughing while watching poor Julie by crushed to death by her own son, who flew forwards in a crash because he wasn't buckled up.
- Only Stwpd Cowz Txt N Drive is based on the message of not texting and driving. In this film, the main character texts and drives, and her failure to pay attention while operating a vehicle causes a major crash that results in five fatalities.
- The Irish Road Safety Authority
has also created a campaign of horrific ads to promote road safety, including one of a classroom of children getting flattened by someone driving carelessly, and another brutal one of people getting in an accident while not wearing seatbelts.
Asian Animation
- Episode 8 of Happy Heroes and the Magical Lab has "remember to wear your seat belt when travelling by car" as its lesson. In the episode, Big M. hijacks a car to get away from an angry man chasing him for not paying for his food, but he doesn't wear his seat belt and gets injured. After recovering from the accident, Big M. has Huo Haha cast a spell that stops everyone's seat belts from working properly, and the Supermen go to solve the problem. The episode also has Doctor H. explaining the function of a seat belt retractor (the component Huo Haha magically removed from everyone's cars).
Comic Books
- A too constant use of this trope on TV is parodied in a Achille Talon where, for some reason, the An Aesop that the TV presenter kept coming with at the end of various programs (including a western action movie, a children cartoon, a news program and a quiz game, neither of them talking about cars at any point) was "Be careful when you drive".
Comic Strips
- The original namesake of Dilbert was a Navy pilot version of this, depicting a pilot making various dumb mistakes or pulling stunts and coming to grief because of it.
Films — Live-Action
- Averted with Footloose in that the ban on dancing is because of five teenagers dying in a car accident when returning from a dance club drunk, but the message is that kids should be allowed to express themselves.
- The first Mad Max movie was intended to be a warning about consequences of dangerous driving. The hoons and rev-heads who saw it left feeling that their lifestyle had been validated.
- Last Clear Chance is a short film produced by Union Pacific (yes, the railroad company) where a cop drops in on a farm family to explain to the youngest son—who just got his driver's license—all the ways he could die horribly if he drives carelessly. Especially if he drives carelessly near railroad tracks. And then, because they live in a cruel, merciless world, the older brother crashes his car into the side of a moving train—killing himself and his fiancee—not ten minutes later.
Railroad employee: Why don't they look, Carl? Why don't they look?
- 1939 short Drunk Driving is part of the long-running MGM "Crime Does Not Pay" series. The Aesop in this one is, unsurprisingly, "don't drink and drive". The protagonist is a guy who drove his car when he had a buzz on and got into a fender-bender. After escaping with a $25 fine, he goes out drunk driving again, and this time kills three people and cripples his wife.
- The Days of Our Years is another Union Pacific-produced film. This one is mainly about workplace safety, but it does include one cautionary tale about unsafe driving. Joe, excited about his engagement, drives recklessly home from work. He rolls over his truck and has to wear a neck brace for the foreseeable future.
- Doctor Strange (2016): Stephen Strange's mangled hands (and thus, quest to learn the mystic arts) are the direct result of his driving distracted on a winding road at night during bad weather, while speeding. The end credits include a warning against distracted driving.
- They don't really labor the point, but initiating event in Seven Pounds is the protagonist answering a text while driving, drifting over a center line, and causing a major crash. They don't really underline the point that it could have all been avoided if he'd left his phone in his pocket, but his suicidal guilt over his responsibility in the crash is the driving force of the entire film.
Literature
- Togetherly Long: Used in one storyline, though not about cars per se, but people from a primitive land have just discovered wheels, and they're treated like cars when someone gets drunk and loses control of "the wheel", meaning the large wheel they were rolling around slipped out of their hands and rolled down a hill and injured a kid. The storyline ends with a message saying you should always have a designated driver.
Live Action Television
- Has happened several times in Degrassi, most memorably in Degrassi: The Next Generation with the death of Adam by texting Becky that he still loves her and is going to win her over.
- Top Gear (UK) tends to play this for laughs.
- Just before one season, Richard shoots a segment where he drives a jet-powered dragster called the Vampire. Infamously, he crashed on a high speed run and ended up critically injured. When the (delayed) following season debuted, Jeremy opened by explaining what had happened and detailing the circumstances of the crash. Then he turns to a now recovered Richard and says "Thank you, Richard, for reminding us that speed kills."
- A later episode was shot to remind people that trying to beat a train to a crossing can be fatal. They demonstrate this by placing a van with a crash dummy inside on a crossing and having a train hit it. Jeremy shows footage of the wreckage and points out...that the dummy isn't wearing his reflective vest.
- Dance Moms features a routine called "The Last Text" that simulates six girls dying in a car accident due to distracted driving, ending with the Sole Survivor running off-stage in horror and grief. Can be watched here.
- In Glee, Quinn gets paralyzed for a short while due to texting when driving and in the next episode has a rant at Finn, who walked into people in the hallway because of looking at his phone. Finn, also, almost killed a mailman when learning to drive which is treated as his turn-off. During Quinn's storyline, she starts being the character mouthpiece to drive the story home, until Artie (who was paralyzed in a car accident as a child) helps her chill out.
- In Go On Ryan's wife died some time before the pilot and he's still dealing with it. It turns out that she died in a car accident while texting, so now Ryan is very upset when he sees people texting while driving. He throws a beverage at Terrell Owens when he sees him doing it. The pilot ends with star Matthew Perry out of character doing a PSA against texting while driving.
- CHiPs would do this on occasion. One example is the episode "Wheels of Justice" which starts with a multiple car accident caused by a drunk driver. His sober wife switches places with him while nobody's looking and he's acquitted since no one can prove he was actually driving. At the end of the episode, he gets into another accident while driving drunk. This time, his wife is killed.
- MythBusters tested several scenarios said to cause dangerous driving, including:
- Driving while tipsy. note
- Driving while sleep-deprived.
- Driving in high-heeled shoes.
- Driving while using a cell phone (both normal usage and hands-free).
- Driving while angry.
- Driving while needing to use the toilet.
- Swapping drivers while the car is still moving.
- Most seasons of Canada's Worst Driver feature a "Distracted Driving" challenge. Unlike most challenges, the point isn't to teach the bad drivers how to eat, do their makeup, or send text messages while driving; it's to show them they can't do those things.
- Grey's Anatomy: It's not treated like a big life lesson, but it's hard not to take the message when there's a Musical Episode dedicated to it: Callie and Arizona are driving to go on vacation. Arizona is driving, proposes to Callie and waits for a response — when she turns back to the road they're only a second from impact with a truck.
Music
- The music video for Simple Plan's song "Untitled (How Could This Happen To Me?)" depicts a fatal traffic collision and its aftermath, in which friends and relatives of the victim are thrown about, as if hit by a speeding car themselves, symbolizing the rippling impact of the driver's carelessness ruining the lives of more than just those directly involved.
- The video for Geggy Tah's "Whoever You Are" is made to look like a driver's ed film from the 60's. The last part specifically warns against drunk driving. Although you have to wonder how seriously the band takes the lessons given that they're playing their instruments in the car.
Radio
- When B.F. Goodrich sponsored The Shadow, the title character delivered these during the ad break.
Video Games
- Thrill Drive: The game is about driving safely, and it teaches the players how to do that while also playing it for horror.
Western Animation
- One early episode of The Simpsons has one of these types of films (It stars Troy McClure and is part of a series including "Alice's Adventures Through the Windshield Glass" and "The Decapitation of Larry Leadfoot") being shown to Homer after he was caught on a traffic offence, but he thinks it is a comedy show and ends up laughing all the way through it.
- The Private Snafu series of cartoons was produced by Warner Bros. as instructional videos for the American army during World War Two. Focusing on the titular Snafu, an incompetent soldier, this taught soldiers the do's and don'ts. This trope was Played for Laughs in one episode that had Snafu driving a jeep, but getting distracted by a poster of a woman in lingerie and crashing. Explosions ensued, but being a cartoon, Snafu was perfectly okay. Since the shorts were entertaining, soldiers paid attention and they still got the message across.
- Spoofed on Rocko's Modern Life with a film shown on traffic class which had a crash test done with dummies made out of tomatoes, making for extra gory results.
- Disney
- The famous 1950 Disney short Motor Mania, in which Goofy plays a dual role as kind pedestrian Mr. Walker and demon driver Mr. Wheeler.
- A pair of 1965 featurettes, Freewayphobia and Goofy's Freeway Troubles, had Goofy on the road again, this time discussing proper etiquette and care on the freeway.
- The 1957 short "The Story of Anyburg, U.S.A." is about a town that puts automobiles on trial for all the damage they cause with their reckless driving. The defense argues successfully that the culprit is not the cars themselves but the people driving them.
- FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman In December 2015, three Humble Media Genius videos tackle dangers of distracted driving. It's Justified because in real life, There's an increase of car accidents as a result of texting while driving. But regardless, the videos do a great job of tackling a serious topic while maintaining the usual light-hearted comedy.
- A humorous version occurs in the Sonic Boom episode, "Three Men and my Baby!". The plot is started by Knuckles being distracted by the pizza oven in his monster truck, causing an accident. After the events of the episode, they solve the problem by making it so the oven can only work when the truck is parked.
Knuckles: Remember, kids, don't cook and drive!
- In Metalocalypse Toki and Skwisgaar get busted in a DWI and are sent to driving school to regain their licenses. During one of their classes they're shown a rather morbid video called "Crash Site on the Corner of Blood Street and Guts Circle" that covers unsafe driving and isn't afraid to show the gory results of the accidents, much to the pair's discomfort.
Real Life
- A compilation video of pedestrians getting hit at a crosswalk in Thailand is being used to send a powerful message to encourage cars to stop at crosswalks, and for pedestrians to cross at crosswalks rather than jaywalk. (warning: graphic content)
Drive like everyone else is an alcoholic driving a Pinto.
