It Can Wait

Texting and driving seems to be an epidemic that no one wants to go out of their way to tackle. However, after the death toll from texting-related accidents rose through the years, someone finally rose up to speak to the public in 2010. In December of last year, AT&T uploaded a video onto their youtube account in order to kickstart their anti-texting and driving campaign. The video is a documentary, featuring several people who were gravely affected by texting-related accidents. Some share stories about losing their loved ones to a text. Others share their grave injuries sustained from the accident. The video ends with a line of text, and slowly types out one letter at a time, 'Txting and driving... it can wait.'

The message presents a powerful theme, emphasizing that no text is worth dying for throughout the video. Because AT&T is not only a powerful company, but a phone company campaigning against the use of their phones while behind the wheel, the strong ethos is generated immediately. Along with that, the video aims a sharp right hook into our pathos. By discussing deaths and severe injuries caused by the problem, it evokes the correct emotions of "That's so sad... I definitely don't want to be responsible for that..." It also ties in a good percentage of logos by giving us the statistics to convince any skeptical viewer of texting's harm and distraction. The only thing that I would include would be a slightly stronger emphasis on statistics, and mentioning of the reaction time being that of someone with a .08 BAC. Other than that, I think that the message is delivered beautifully, tapping into all of the key points of rhetoric. The intention is to show people the real life consequences, unblocked from any statistic or unreadable diagram, and they very much succeed in doing so. I know that my mother watched this a few months ago, and she ever since has been trying to cut down on her own cell phone use in the car.