You remember - the ones that say, eg. "Don't fall asleep when you're driving, if you feel sleppy then stop for a bit", that sort of thing.

Have you seen OUR version of these?
Incredibly graphic blood 'n' guts "Don't drink and drive/speed/drive when sleepy" ads.
It's like Tarantino directed them. Dead mothers hanging from seatbelts next to screaming babies, mutilated men weeping for the brother they killed in the car crash, wailing parents who attack the boyfriend who was drunk when he killed their daughter in an accident...

They first started about 12 years ago. Lots of complaints from people who claim "it's traumatic for people whose relatives have been killed in car accidents to have to see these ads". Well, maybe, but the reality is that these ads are astonishingly successful and the road toll has plumetted as a direct result.
Plus we all really like the "Drink, drive, bloody idiot" slogan.

they're getting more graphic here too.

the seatbelt one where the boy in the back kills his mother by crashing into the back of her seat when the impact occurs "then he sat back down" is quite brutal.

not as bad as some of the ones you've describes though,

I still say power station/frisbee and grim reaper by the pond were the most graphic and frightening.

Think once, think twice, THINK (thumps table) BIKE!!!

Poor old Edward Judd. I bet more people recognise him from that than that rather good film The Day The Earth Caught Fire, which was on again the other day at some ungodly hour.

When they repeated Here Come The Double Deckers a few years ago, they created a weird little 1970s oasis by filling the ad breaks with Public Information films.

It was very odd.

Really?


You sometimes get them at closedown on BBC1... Emma Bunton's "don't use fireworks while drunk on Millennium Eve" was a particular classic of recent times...

The one Jo_ham mentioned is pretty awful. There's one I remember from about 18 years ago, about being careful while driving at night, where the face of a demon looms up over a car containing a young family. Gave me endless nightmares. The ones where kids got burned by fireworks and the Jimmy Saville 'Play It Safe' ones are still very vivid in my mind!
Channel 5 show a different type of PIF at night, showing the valuable work done by H.M. Customs, The Navy, and the Postal Service!

I have a MPEG of one of the Aussie PIF's; a guy is carrying a couple of pizza boxes and generally minding his own business, he crosses the road and gets completely run over buy a car and is sent 50 yards down the road. It looks *too* real. The moral? Always carry a Green Cross Code Man if you're hungry in Australia.

Two vids, Charley Says Vol.1 and 2 - all the good ones and a few others in a couple of hours. Order them through HMV, or there is a website somewhere (can't remember the URL)!

On a happier note, that old musical PIF about being seen at night always cheers me up whenever I think about it.

"At night make it white,
In the dark make it bright,
But get yourself seen.
If you're working for a living,
Or just riding for your pleasure,
Let the world see your life,
It's something that you treasure,
So get yourself seen!"

Something like that anyway. There was a brilliant bit with some kid applying luminous tape to his Raleigh Grifter "Take some paint to your bike, Use some tape if you like," I always wanted some of that luminous tape. Not sure why. I wouldn't have put it on my bike. Maybe I'd have just looked at it when I was bored.

Late-night ITV used to be full of them, including ones about being in accidents while on holiday, and rather more innocuously, one in which Punt & Dennis tell you to take care on canals. (Early 90s, these ones.)

There was this one recently which used "The Liquidator" in the background. Wasn't the ad warning you about heart attacks or something? Can't remember - it unsettled me anyway, so whenever it came on I started to switch channels.

>they're getting more graphic here too.

>the seatbelt one where the boy in the back kills his mother by crashing into the back of her seat when the impact occurs "then he sat back down" is quite brutal.

It wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't turned to his sister sitting next to him and smiled.

I think that 'Liquidator' one looked as though it was going to be a public info film, but then turned into another advert altogether. Possibly for a car... or was it a TV licence one? It was definitely supposed to be humorous in a sort of "ha ha ha you thought he was going to talk about having a heart attack but then he talked about something else" kind of way.

In other words, not funny at all.

There was a very nasty one on Channel 5 recently... kids pouring weedkiller out with a dolls' tea set. Brrrrr...

>Think once, think twice, THINK (thumps table) BIKE!!!

Arrgh! I've been waiting YEARS to use that line, and I had the *perfect* opportunity to shout it at someone yesterday, when a van driver suddenly turned left forcing me to crash into his passenger door...and did I think of it? No, all I could come up with was a few uninspired swear words...gaaahh!

Luckily Ewar was driving a bulldozer and the van was brushed aside... but it did scratch the paintwork slightly, hence her rage.

LOL

Actually, it was the tank. And he bent my pointy gun bit. But I don't get road rage, oh no. Mine is a more general, non-specific, all-purpose rage.

Anything in a bottle is a drink to a child.

what is this channel 5 of which you all speak?

j xxx