Public Service Announcement
The Texting and Driving: SD Department of Highway Safety public service announcement was uploaded on YouTube in 2010, having over 290,000 views. This video has inspired 288 people across South Dakota and potentially the nation to post a comment considering the implications of such an action. At the beginning of the video is a young women creating a critique of a new smart phone driving as a video, combing over features of the phone, oblivious to the road and suddenly the flash a small child running out into the road to grab a basketball before the scream of the young women commences before the screen blacks out and displays the words, “Texting and Driving, save a life, save it for l8r”. This video is an applicable example of appeal to an audiences Emotion, Reasoning and Credibility.
Creating a Connection and Using Fear to Prevent Texting and Driving The focus of this PSA is to include the reader with a situation that is comparable to a situation that the viewer can identify with. The young girl in the short video was explaining reasons why her phone was so cool. This presents interest in the phone, and diverts the attention away from the fact that she is driving. In a sense the purpose is to distract the viewer from the driving taking place in the video. The young girl states “I barely even have to look at it.” She was sending a text message at the time. As the young lady looks up from her phone a small child is picking up his ball in the middle of the street in front of her vehicle, she panics, slams on the brakes, and the screen goes black. This imbues fear in the viewer. The viewer is meant to panic when the little boy is seen. The viewer is allowed to see the boy before the driver. Allowing the viewer to see the accident before it is doomed to happen invokes a strong sense of pathos in the PSA’s intent.
Using a Government Institution to create Authority
The authority in this case comes from the South Dakota Department of Highway Safety. The department of Highway safety’s goal is to, “ensure the safety of all people in South Dakota” (Dep. Public Safety, 2014).With this ad they are encouraging all drivers to put their phones down and pay attention to the task of driving. Although South Dakota along with many of the countries states has no laws about texting and driving there are many who expressly forbid it. In either case, the brief image of a little girl in the street and the inevitable outcome is a reminder to us all of the dangers of distracted driving.
The reasoning for the psa don’t text and drive
There are many reasons that people think that it is ok to text and drive. In this PSA we see a woman that’s tells us about her new phone, and she get gets bored with driving. With the phone, she has apps and she can get a text and text back right away. In addition, this all make her feel like she will not be bored any more, while she driving. The effect of her doing this she missed seeing the child in the road and then the screen goes black, making you think that she just hit the kid.
Ultimately, this video does an effective job of capturing the viewer’s Pathos, Ethos and Logos buy dramatizing the initial shock of hitting a small child with a car. It pulls the viewer in by angering them about a child getting hit by a car. It captures the viewer’s logos by implying that there is no reason to be playing on your cell phone while drive and finally, it captures the ethos by encouraging people to drive safely and enforcing it by the government entity of the Department of Public Safety.
References:
SD Department of Public Safety, 2014. Welcome to the Department of Public Safety. South Dekota Department of Public Safety. Retrieved from: https://dps.sd.gov/
References: SD Department of Public Safety, 2014. Welcome to the Department of Public Safety. South Dekota Department of Public Safety. Retrieved from: https://dps.sd.gov/
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