Public safety adverts

Emp_Fab

What happened to them ?

I mean....  had anyone got statistics on just how many children got locked in fly-tipped fridges?  Remember that one?  "Make sure you smash the lock off before you carelessly abandon your broken fridge wherever suits you".

I believe profit got in the way of public safety, as it often does, and these ads were shelved, leaving us with a generation that dazzles and doesn't dip, never learns to swim, climbs into electricity substations, operates a drill with matchsticks holding the wires into the socket then goes off to play and gets into strangers' cars.

I think these essential instructional adverts should be brought back - better still updated for modern life.

PearlsPreserve

I think it's because the current government sincerely believes that asinine three word slogans do the equivalent work, at a fraction of the cost.  "Hands, Face, Space" "See it, Say it, Sorted" "Stop the Boats" "Get brexit done" “Stay Home. Save Lives. Protect the NHS”. "Fuck off tories" etc. etc.

springhead

Don't fly your kite near power lines was one.  And of course Rolf Harris encouraging children to learn how to swim.

racefaceec90

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChOHnSL7ZCg&ab_channel=KurzfilmAgenturHamburg

stickyfiddle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waEssuzV_XU 

mudslide73

Think once, think twice, think bike traumatised me as a kid.

Jonathangus

@racefaceec90 a bona fide classic!

EricTheWeary

The last ones were the anti DVD piracy ones in the 2000s. The Central Office of Information was closed in 2011 which was the end of anyone having an central role for these things, I guess government depts commission them themselves now (I guess we had Covid ones although I'm struggling to remember one). 

JAYJO

PearlsPreserve said:

I think it's because the current government sincerely believes that asinine three word slogans do the equivalent work, at a fraction of the cost.  "Hands, Face, Space" "See it, Say it, Sorted" "Stop the Boats" "Get brexit done" “Stay Home. Save Lives. Protect the NHS”. "Fuck off tories" etc. etc.

Rolf fking Harris

BillDL

Emp_Fab said:

I think these essential instructional adverts should be brought back - better still updated for modern life.

For most safety adverts to work effectively they need to shock or frighten people.  Most of us, and particular younger people, have a "won't happen to me" attitude.  Unfortunately safety "adverts" that were likely to make people realise that it might just happen to them would be too traumatising for many people in "modern life" and parents would demand that they be banned because they were frightening their already nervous kids.  Remember the AIDS television adverts in the 80s?  I've watched reactions of a modern generation watching those now and the comments from most were that they were too scary and ominous.  How exactly do you warn kids about the dangers of climbing the fence into an electricity sub-station to retrieve a football without making it a bit graphic?

fastonebaz

Ironically,  if they issued public safety messages about the dangers of too much doom scrolling on social media,  they'd have to advertise it on social media since no youths I know watch live TV.

Nitefly

I remember one about a lass driving a  car with automatic transmission into a police car, because she got her legs crossed or something.

JAYJO

BillDL said:

Emp_Fab said:

I think these essential instructional adverts should be brought back - better still updated for modern life.

For most safety adverts to work effectively they need to shock or frighten people.  Most of us, and particular younger people, have a "won't happen to me" attitude.  Unfortunately safety "adverts" that were likely to make people realise that it might just happen to them would be too traumatising for many people in "modern life" and parents would demand that they be banned because they were frightening their already nervous kids.  Remember the AIDS television adverts in the 80s?  I've watched reactions of a modern generation watching those now and the comments from most were that they were too scary and ominous.  How exactly do you warn kids about the dangers of climbing the fence into an electricity sub-station to retrieve a football without making it a bit graphic?

I remember a pylon advert. I think it involved a child and a kite.... awful to watch now..

BillDL

JAYJO said:

BillDL said:

..........  How exactly do you warn kids about the dangers of climbing the fence into an electricity sub-station to retrieve a football without making it a bit graphic?

I remember a pylon advert. I think it involved a child and a kite.... awful to watch now..

Aye, it was quite shocking.  Made my hair stand on end   Having dealt with an explosive pylon death (somebody trying to steal copper) and a sub-station electrocution (boy retrieving a football with a length of metal fencing), it is very nasty to see what carnage it inflicts. If the power suppliers put large warning posters with photos of those victims all around the fences I doubt it would dissuade the people that do this kind of thing anyway.  Similarly if railway authorities posted photos of people that have been struck by trains all over their fences it still wouldn't stop copper thieves or the ordinary people that cut holes in the fences for a shortcut.

Less people watch terrestrial TV these days, so there are less opportunities to have public safety adverts seen by millions of people.  You couldn't have them in a cinema along with other informational public broadcasts before the intermission, because they don't have intermissions and people would be annoyed and / or alarmed because they just wanted to watch the movie.  Still images on large billboards aren't nearly as effective, people would complain that the billboards were intrusive or were causing unnecessary alarm, and in areas where there is a lot of signage they would become invisible to people in the same way that we are now so used to seeing Hi-Viz vests that they hardly attract our attention any longer - unless they're pink.  Social media channels like YouTube wouldn't work, because that media stream is already riddled with people doing dangerous shit for entertainment value.

VimFuego

we got shown a brilliant one from India when I was doing my clinical training (the bit on burns etc.). It was actual footage of a young lad climbing on top of a train and getting electrocuted and bursting into flames then dying. They don't fuck around over there!!!

TTony

Nitefly said:

I remember one about a lass driving a  car with automatic transmission into a police car, because she got her legs crossed or something.

I thought "keep your legs crossed" was the strapline of another safety film - aimed at those young lasses 

Kilgore

The spirit of dark and lonely water...

MU HA HA

CavemanGrogg

Jim Morrison of the Doors recorded the best public safety advert ever, it's so worth looking for and watching - it was court ordered he didn't want to make it or do it willingly so it ended up not being publicly broadcasted.

BillDL

Emp_Fab said:

I believe profit got in the way of public safety, as it often does, and these ads were shelved, leaving us with a generation that:

1. Dazzles and doesn't dip.

2. Never learns to swim.

3. Climbs into electricity substations.

4. Operates a drill with matchsticks holding the wires into the socket then ...

5. Goes off to play and gets into strangers' cars.

I think these essential instructional adverts should be brought back - better still updated for modern life.

1. I assume you mean headlights of cars?  Modern cars have LED headlights that were designed for drivers of those cars to see the road much more clearly at night, but less thought was given to how blinding they might be to other drivers even while dipped.  The modern penchant for SUV type vehicles that sit higher and have headlights that are usually more blinding in a rear-view mirror than smaller lower cars.  Modern cars have automation that allows the headlights to go to full beam and back to dipped automatically, but sensors are often fooled and the drivers are oblivious to how this affects other drivers, or are too selfish to give a toss.  Rather than profit affecting safety, modern life has affected safety.

2. Yes, lots of schools no longer have PE and swimming in their curricula.  In many cases this isn't due entirely to cutbacks though.  There are plenty reasons including gender-related and cultural/religious ones, and also an ever-present fear that the instructor and/or teacher may be a predator.  While school education seems to be slipping downwards, perhaps education authorities think it's better to educate pupils in academic subjects rather than teaching them to run, jump and swim?  I would say that ultimately it's the parent's / parents' responsibility to ensure that their children can swim.  Yes, I know, the economic situation is such that most often both parents or the sole parent has to work and doesn't have much time left to take children to the public pool, but in a lot of cases the parent/s seem to have a good bit of time left to go to the gym or piss around reading social media on their phones.  Public pools open earlier and close later these days than I remember from the past.  Every Summer we hear sad stories of people drowning in rivers, lakes, quarries and reservoirs.  Often this is not because they can't swim, but because they jumped into very cold water or didn't realise the strength of the current.  I don't believe that warning signs will dissuade most young people from swimming in quarries or reservoirs any more than hearing or reading about the sad news via the TV, online news, local social media groups, etc, and you can't fence off every river.  More a "modern life" thing than cutting back on expenditure I would suggest.

3. I covered this in a prevous comment.

4. People will do this kind of thing regardless of safety warnings.  If you don't have enough common sense to tell you that it's dangerous then it's unlikely that public safety bulletins will make you any more sensible.  That's just a fact of life and always has been.

5. I would say that never before has there been such an awareness of "stranger danger" by children and adults as there is now in our modern society.  Previous public safety media was never able to say exactly what the stranger might actually do, and I'm sure they wouldn't be able to describe it in any more detail in a modern age.  From what I have seen people are learning about sex and sexuality from a much younger age than probably 20 years ago, and I've never before heard or read as many instances of the words "rape" and "sexual abuse" as I hear and read now, so if anything there is more awareness.  Very few people hitch hike now compared with previous eras, and more teenagers have their own cars than ever before.  Nobody is going to tell me that young women going out to pubs and clubs aren't already well aware of date rape drugs or the possibility of being raped by going to a strange man's house.  A significant number of professional footballers have all been accused of rape, and it's been all over the news.  What kind of public safety warnings would be alarming enough to have an impact on young people in a "modern age" without traumatising them and making them unnecessarily paranoid?

merlin

I was a member of The Tufty Club. This means that I am a member of the "Protect and Survive" generation. Actually Im a Protest and Survive ideologist but thats another clunk click. 

sev112

Stop look listen 

look left, look right, then left again

at least one of those was Darth Vader, and the other probably the aforementioned squirrel