The victims of wrecked lives. Note
"How can she forget about it?! She can't even sleep! She heard a kid at school say you were a murderer. I don't know what to tell her! How am I supposed to explain that you killed a little boy?! I won't ever understand why you had to drive! Now everything's screwed up! Isn't it? Well, isn't it?! LOOK AT ME!!!"
— Kathy's mum, Kathy Can't Sleep
Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives was a series of British public information films that ran between 1987 to 1997 as part the British government's Safety on the Move campaign to inform the public that... well, drinking and driving wrecks lives.
Unlike many drink driving ads that focus on the consequences of the offender, the campaign targets more towards the devastation and impact of the victims' families and friends, intended to highlight the emotional response of the viewer.
The series can be watched for free on YouTube here. Be warned. These ads can be very distressing and unsettling to watch.
Drinking and Editing Wrecks TV Tropes:
- Anti-Alcohol Aesop: The whole series is an anti-drinking and driving PSA, teaching people that drunk driving is bad. Not just because of the effects on the victims and perpetrators; others, such as their loved ones and the emergency responders who are called to the scenes of the drink driving crashes, are effected as well.
- Blue Is Heroic: The firefighter in "Fireman's Story" wears a blue shirt.
- Bookends: "Mark" begins and ends with the narrator calling Mark "a great bloke".
- Christmas Episode: "One More, Dave", "Christmas Pudding", and "Mark" all take place around Christmastime. The former two also involve Christmas dinner in some way.
- Crappy Holidays:
- "One More, Dave": The main focus is the victim Dave, who was critically injured due to driving drunk and now has to eat his Christmas dinner liquefied and being fed by a caretaker with a spoon.
- In "Mark," his ex-friend discusses how his drink driving killed a husband and wife on Christmas, leaving their two children orphans and likely ruining the holiday for them.
- Death of a Child:
- In "Fireman's Story", one of the two dead victims was a baby.
- In "Children's Story", a primary school-aged boy named Matthew was killed by a drunk driver.
- "Kathy Can't Sleep" has the eponymous girl hear her mother yelling at her father due to the fact that he hit and killed a young boy while driving drunk.
- Features in at least two radio adverts for the campaign. One features a true account of a woman describing how her son was killed by a drinking driver; another contains a fictional story where a teenager says he no longer trusts his father, who ran over a young child after drinking.
- Dies Wide Open: "Eyes" consists entirely of a dead woman staring the audience in the face.
- Drunk Driver: Each ad features someone who either is a drunk drivernote , or a victim of one.
- Dull Surprise: The man near the end of "In the Summertime", when he looks at the car crash, doesn't look particularly horrified at the bloody sight; rather, he looks mildly disappointed.
- Empty Bedroom Grieving:
- One early ad had a middle-aged woman discuss how her teenaged daughter was critically and permanently injured by a Drunk Driver. It ends with the woman sitting in said daughter's bedroom, hopeful that one day she will come home.
- Another ad featured the family of a young man killed in an alcohol-related crash; when the family returns home from his funeral, the man's kid brother is shown sitting in his (the deceased older brother's) bedroom.
- Fate Worse than Death:
- "One More, Dave" has the eponymous Dave rendered incapable of caring for himself after suffering from a traumatic brain injury due to driving while drunk.
- "Jenny" has the girl's mother explaining how due to being seriously injured by a drink driver, she is likely to be institutionalized for the rest of her life.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing:
- In "In the Summertime", the infamous line "Have a drink, have a drive" from the eponymous song is heard a few seconds before the crash occurs.
- In "Kathy Can't Sleep", right after the final line "LOOK AT ME!!" is spoken, Kathy gives a haunting final look at the audience.
- Friend to All Children: The firefighter in "Fireman's Story" becomes especially irate when it's revealed that a baby died in the crash.
- He-Man Woman Hater: In "One More, Dave", one man drops the rather sexist line of "Halfnote is what girls drink!".
- Ironic Echo:
- "One More, Dave" has Dave's friend urge him "Come on, Dave, just one more (as in, one more drink)". At the end, Dave's caretaker urges him "Come on, Dave, just one more (as in, one more bite of food)".
- "Mark" has his friend and the ad's narrator calling him a "great bloke", in both when he likely first knew him and in a sarcastic tone (due to his drink driving killing a couple and leaving their children orphans).
- Letting the Air out of the Band: In "In the Summertime", the music slows down and crawls to a halt when a man looks offscreen in shock, and a car accident scene is shown.
- Match Cut: "Christmas Pudding" fades from the titular pudding to a scene of the fiery crashed car that the woman's boyfriend died from.
- Minimalist Cast: Several ads feature very few characters; sometimes, even just one.
- The Nameless:
- In "One More, Dave", Dave's friends and caregiver are not named.
- In "Kathy Can't Sleep", Kathy's parents are not named.
- In "Mirror", the narrator is not namednote .
- In "Children's Story", the teacher is not named.
- In "Mark", his former friend telling his story is not named.
- Never My Fault:
- "Fireman's Story" has the aforementioned fireman express anger at the drink driver who said it wasn't his fault after killing a woman and her baby in a car accident.
- "Mates" has the quasi-remorseful friend try to shift blame for the drink driving accident that severely injured his friend.
- "Classmates" has one of the voice-overs of the children angry at the intoxicated driver who killed his classmate and said that the accident wasn't his fault.
- P.O.V. Cam: "Police Station" is shot entirely from the perspective of a drunk driver being turned over to the police after an accident.
- Rotoscoping: Rotoscoping is used partially in "Mark" for the visuals.
- Special Edition Title: The special holiday ads had the campaign's tagline slightly altered.
- "Christmas Pudding" has "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Christmas"
- "In the Summertime" has "In the Summertime, Drinking and Driving Wrecks Even More Lives."
- True Companions: The man from the obscure "Victim" ad was rendered a quadriplegic after his crash, but explains how his close mates still take him out and even help him eat.
- Twisted Christmas: "Christmas Pudding" features a man killed in a fiery crash whilst on his way to a Christmas party with his girlfriend and her family.
- Wham Shot:
- In "Mirror", the woman calmly puts on makeup and discusses her situation and her boyfriend. Once she turns her head, we can see the true severity of her facial injuries.
- "Christmas Pudding" has the girlfriend waiting for her boyfriend and then gets a call saying that he was killed in a crash. Disturbingly, the Christmas pudding at her family's dinner table fades into an image of his crashed and engulfed car.
- Come on, Troper, just one more.
