We thought we were watching ads-turns out we were watching trauma with a message. 😳 Which one hit you the hardest? And yes, we’re still recovering. 💬 Drop your favorite UK PSA below & don't forget: 🎬 Watch the full uncut reactions + early access on Patreon: patreon.com/killermcknight
Hope you remembered to Stop, Look, and Listen on your walk! The most brutal ones that I remember were shown in schools and on TV in the 70's and 80's, we had people visit the schools around spring time to show us videos about electricity sub stations and pylons, canals and rivers, or the railway tracks, because they knew in a few weeks once summer started we'd all be outside behaving like idiots. A lot were probably never backed up to other media before the tapes perished unfortunately so I don't know how many of them survived. But I guess if people survived longer than the videos, they did their job. Thanks for the reaction though, it was interesting to watch, I think sometimes we're a little jaded to these over here.
All the one(s) with kids hit me the hardest ... and, as a Brit, I would remember when I was those kids age(s) in the 1970s - I/we would run across the roads in my hometown while playing It/Tag/1-2-3 😮 Thankfully, no road accidents, but it wasn't for the lack of trying - kids do stupid stuff and I'm very aware of that as an adult car driver (age 59 now) 😊
These are very tame, try the "DOE Irish Road Safety" psa's. There is one called "Mess" which is only about a minute long but you will remember it for the rest of your life.
These ads stopped over 10 years ago due to "budget cuts". Which is a shame. There's a generation of young drivers who never had the shit scared out of them!
They don't even need to make new ones. Just show the old ones. There's about 20 of these that are still very relevant. (Maybe the "Clunk Click" one is a little old now)
Yes. These were SO effective at reducing road deaths. The standard of driving is reducing and the number of cars on the road is increasing. It's ridiculous that the gov't isn't spending money on getting PSA like these into the mainstream channels.
It's worth noting that none of these videos had disclaimers at the start. You'd be watching funny adverts for McDonald's and Fosters beer, then all of a sudden, BOOM, dead children.
One of the worst road safety PSAs I saw was one that deceived you into thinking it was for advertising a new car model by Mitsubishi or Holden or Nissan. And then, wham! I couldn’t even trust car commercials after that one…
That is why it works it's supposed to shock you not wrap you in fluffy rainbow blankies with a hot chocolate how are kids ever gonna get by if they're clueless about the world
@JonathonPringle-g8t3t its not being woke, that is the point of the comment. the point is to acknowledge that they come out of nowhere because accidents happen seemingly out of nowhere. this wasn't a "woke comment", this was literally to point out that accidents don't have a disclaimer, so these PSAs dont have one either.
As a Brit, I strongly believe that UK TV should bring back Public Safety Films. If you thought the road ones were bad you should see the ones about swimming in quarry's, talking to strangers, messing about near pylons and electricity sub-stations and taking rubber boats out in the ocean! We don't teach basic safety rules anymore. Nice to see your reactions :) They also made me feel a bit sick when I saw them on TV years ago.
I was thinking that. There were more disturbing safety commercials from the past about things other than road safety. There's the ones you mentioned, also those about fireworks, and playing on frozen lakes.
The one that really stuck with me was the (recent ish?) one about train tracks. Think tracks, think train, I think the slogan was. A family on a walk playing eye spy and one of the kids has a T word, and the other child guesses train as she steps onto the tracks... and gets hit. Horrific, and now I'd never step onto tracks without thoroughly checking for trains.
@Marzi29 I just looked that one up on here, and watched it. It's sightly reminiscent to the one in the 70s where a child ran into the road and was struck by a car. The same thing happened there, with the screen going blank at the point of the impact. Only that one was more dramatic than this. The boy's mother screamed out his name in horror, and dropped a pack of eggs onto the pavement. That added realism to the sheer trauma of the situation.
The “Julie knew her killer” ad caused me to almost completely fall out with a family member who tried to refuse to wear a seatbelt in the back of my car. I basically refused to move until he had it on, because that ad stuck for me. I guess that means the shock tactics actually work.
I refuse to start with anyone not properly seated and belt on. The best argument I found is "I'll make you pay the fine, but the point on my license is gonna cost you a lot more."
@Argosh As a driver (in the UK) you are only responsible for children under 14 years old. After that age the passenger is fined, not the driver. Also, seat belt offences are non-endorsable meaning that they don't result in points on your licence. I would just stick with the "I'm not driving anywhere until you put it on for everyone's safety" approach.
@halsalljustinthey never went away. It's amazing that people think they did. They just aren't always smash-em-ups because that doesn't always work according to past research.
These were the videos that kept us alive. We need these to come back for a generation who are busy looking at phones and wearing headphones. In 3 years 3 kids have been hit by cars near me.
As soon as I started watching i knew julie would be #1 and all I could think was you think thiese are hard hitting... wait till you see julie, it was on tv when I was 15/16. And thiese was not on late at night.. they was on all day and night.
The greatest thing about your posting this video is that there will most likely be someone else watching that will change their behaviour as a result of watching with you and a life will be saved.
I think I may have saved a couple of lives in california 25 years ago. As part of my course to be a driving instructor, I sat in on a driver's ed class and the lecturer was talking about the importance of seat belts. So when it came to me to speak I told them about the pregnant woman who crashed right outside our hospital while not wearing a belt. She was 8 months and we had to perform a C section to remove the dead baby in order to save her life........the baby was nearly cut in half by the steering wheel....Wear a fekkin seat belt I told them. @ASMRyouKidding
@JadeDoreen Actually people who had been though similar situations lobbied for the ads to stay on tv, because them being reminded was a small price to pay for the chance of stopping someone else having to live though it.
As a millennial growing up in the UK i can confirm this ads worked, it's just a shame they don't have effect ones like this anymore due to complaints ofcom received saying they were too traumatic , but i see it as that is the point to shock people into changing
It wasn't Ofcom that got the compannts, it was the ASA. Ofcom only deals with the actual programs, wheres the ASA deals with anything in the ad breaks (including public service/government founded ones)
The joke goes " I hope I die like my grandfather, in his sleep peacefully... And not screaming like his passengers". It's Why our sense of humour is the way it is.
Injured & killed, anything they might have saved on the budget,are taken up by emergency services & critical care to try & treat these people!! Very sad!!!
The problem is that when these were popular, mainstream television was more prevalent so you could be sure more people see it for a lower cost. Now it’s divided between countless avenues and more expensive. I agree it needs to be seen. Maybe make it mandatory watching in schools and part of driving tests.
I imagine every single person in the UK knew what was about to happen when they saw "JULIE" and probably said "Julie knew her killer. It was her son". That advert was drilled into us. I like that we have such shocking videos. The fact people talk about it shows it works.
Used to, Until the ASA had loads of complaints about how graphic they were (duh that was the point! lol) We don't get this stuff now sadly... When we could do with now more than ever! Not just your normal TV adverts like back then, Now streaming is a thing this would have a huge impact imo.
The number 1 had such a big impact, I remember when my sister Julie got her license which was 9 years after the ad came out she used to say all the time “belts on this Julie doesn’t want to know her killer”
We live in the UK. My teenage Son would not wear his seat belt in the back seat of our car . My wife Julie would look at him with steely eyes and say to him " Put your seatbelt on, Julie knew her killer!" Because of that conversation we are very much all alive.
There was an accident near where I live last year. Car pulling out of a sidestreet got run into by an impatient berk in a Merc. Occupants would've been fine, but the dumb kid in the back seat apparently thought seatbelts were uncomfortable and had quietly taken it off while their parents weren't looking. Fortunately they got off light; only a broken arm. Painful lesson, but at least they're alive to learn it.
Unlike the USA where they're so scared of offending people (the message being 'Don't do that or Mommy will be a trifle annoyed') we are a lit bit more blunt in order to get the message home (the message being 'Do this and you're well and truly fucked'). You tell me which message has the more impact?
You're either naive, or really meant you don't know anyone killed by being hit by a car, neither do I, but I was born in 1964, when I first got hit by a car I was 7 & responsible for getting my siblings 4 year old Boy & Girl Twins, home from school & until mum finished work. A divorced mum of three she did as society expected, worked 6AM-2PM one week, 2PM-10PM the next & I smart self-educated boy, to adult ability according to "School Reading Test" with a dictionary by age 4, became the mum for 8 hours a day from age 6. When the boy ran without looking, I tried to catch him, the police car missed him & I'm also blind from birth in my left eye, ran into the side of the car & survived by pure luck without injury, fully aware of my mistake, but I was reacting on instinct. 2nd one around age 16 to 18 I was on my bike Trying to overtake a Bus as it set off, I was in the driver's blind spot, when the bus hit my bike & it was crushed under the front wheel, but again I escaped without injury, because I fell/jumped off. Lightning does strike twice.
This is the one downside about no longer watching live TV - not that live TV has ads like these anymore. But they were super effective on me as a kid - that girl against the tree lives in my head.
PSAs in the UK all hit hard. For good reason. Of course as a motorcyclist you need to take particular care, but the point of those ones is to say, "Everyone please take more care".
Yeah, as an adult car driver (aged 59, now) and someone who did ride a motorcycle for a couple of years (about 10 - 15 years ago), I still remember the PSA ads saying ... 'Think once, think twice .... think bike'. Noticably, those ads weren't in the 21 that were compiled for you - so, remember, it could have been even worse (better ?) 😅 I do remember most of those PSAs in the compilation, though and it appears (from USA and Canadian reactors that I've seen) that our PSAs tend to be more hard-hitting than those across the pond 😊
All the way through the preceding videos, which were all good, I wondered if the Number: 1 would be ‘Julie’. That one has always stuck in my memory, ever since I first saw it on TV.
The one thing I wish each and every driver would have realised they need to do is keeping track of things they saw. You can only look in one direction at any time. There are obstructions everywhere. Other road users don't pop out of existence the moment you don't see them anymore, so don't act like they do. The bike/motorcycle/car/kid you saw 10 seconds ago is still somewhere.
Seeing your reaction to the animated one thinking 'Oh they do not know what's coming'. Our public safety videos are legendary. I will never ever go near a slurry pit or try to save my frisbee from a pylon. My fellow Brits of a certain age will get me.
Im to young for the pylon one really but they showed that to us in science class for some reason. I also remember one where a girl hits the telephone lines saying its only the telephone line before getting a shock and my whole class bursting out laughing😂
@hooobbit6776they used to show them to us in primary school in the 80s. We'd initially be mocking the flares and 70s hair cuts, then the horror would set in as everyone died! Still not as traumatic as watching Watership Down as a 'treat' one afternoon though!
6:32 they showed these on TV, a lot of them were shown during children’s TV. You’d be sat watching your kids shows after school and a road safety advert or one about not playing on farms and not drinking things from unmarked bottles would come on between the shows. The adverts would also be shown in schools, scout groups etc. They wanted us alive, terrified but alive.
They are Still shown in some of the Church and Private Schools, I remember, from the Ten's, Play Safe (1978) being shown to the Year 2 Children to stop them playing near a Substation! I wonder if that is why Children from those Schools are rather more Cautious than the ones who have been to mainstream, have only had modern, soft, coddling films shown to them, and seem to be almost Oblivious to Danger! We need to get the Old Heavy Hitters back into Mainstream! better a Terrified Child than a Tragedy!
@ I remember around that time, might have been 1979, one of the boys in my year was hit by a car when he ran into the road without looking. Fortunately, he lived and only suffered a broken arm and some serious cuts, that required surgery to close and a few weeks convalescence. On his first day back he was brought to the front of morning assembly and had to show us his scars and tell us how much pain he’d been in. We were all a lot more careful crossing the road after that.
@ Oh My Goodness! thank goodness he was ok! good thing you all learned from that! Again, showing why we need hard hitting PSA's, as Children are often Oblivious to Danger and I am only glad your mates inattentiveness did not lead to worse!
The best anti drink driving advert I ever saw was a wrecked car that was put on display at the entrance to a barracks in Yorkshire. It had belonged to a Sgt Major who crashed and died while drunk. Every christmas, the commandant put it on a platform for everybody to see as a warning and a reminder.
We have a crashed car campaign in our city every summer. Another thing we do (I do talks at high schools re: drinking and driving) is while I'm in doing the lecture, we have four of their classmates not attend. So half way through the talk, the police come in (all of our EMS teams are there) and tell everyone that their friend was drinking and crashed. So we all go out into the schoolyard and we have a crashed car, the person who was driving is being arrested (the driver often isn't hurt), one is being 'treated' by paramedics and the others are under tarps. With the help of their drama dept. it looks pretty real.
The advert that scared the crap out of me was the 1 where a car skids sideways a road hits a curb and rolls upside down through a hedge & rolls right over a group of young school children on the other side frightening
When I was in school we used to have people come in and do talks about road safety and they actually played the “Julie knew her killer” advert to us. I remember being so traumatised that anytime I went in the car with my mum I would make a point of not sitting behind her. Even though I was wearing a seatbelt I wouldn’t risk it. I remember that advert being really shocking at the time and everyone was talking about it because not many people realised that you could kill someone that way in car crash.
As a former motorbiker. the advice i got with my first bike stayed with me forever, and that was to treat every other road user as if they were blind, the only person looking out for you.....is YOU
I watched some of these as a kid growing up. Another classic was 'Come on Dave, just one more', which has Dave being encouraged by his friends to have one more pint, and then encouraged by his mother to have one more spoon of food when he appears in a vegetative state, both are using the same phrase.
I thought that would make the list. It was made slightly worse by always being on around dinner time, so if you had the tv on, you had to watch his mum scraping minced beef in gravy off his chin.
19:00 The reason "post 9pm version" is important on the card for the video is because of something called "the watershed" - after 9pm kiddies are assumed to be in bed and more adult content is allowed.
For Americans, we can show "R-rated" films on TV after the watershed; PG only before (though most PG13 films can be cut to a PG version for before the watershed). As a result, the ads are allowed to be a lot more adult after 9pm (as well as the programs).
Going back as far as 1971 when I was learning to drive,my instructor always made us aware that when we were approaching an icecream van in the street to slow down and watch out for children,he told us that once a kid as money in their hand they are oblivious to everything but getting that icecream,I'm now 72 and have always slowed down and looked out for children when approaching one.
I think this (about children more interested in ice-cream vans so drivers must be vigilant) was in the copy of my Highway Code when I was new in the UK in 1995. It sticks in my mind.
As a car driver, you have to treat every motorcyclist on the road as if they were driven by selfish morons that believe that they own the road. Just for your own safety.
@jedislap8726 As a responsible bike rider that is the attitude you have to have for car drivers. Lost count of the times I've nearly been wiped out by idiots driving cars through no fault of my own. I drive large vehicles for a living as well so I know what I'm talking about. Too many fools on the road!
The most successful campaign in the UK was actually the "Green Cross Code " man in the 70s who was a 6'5" very large man in a superhero costume who would zap in an teach children how to cross the road safely . Child pedestrian deaths dropped by about 50%. That man was David Prowse who later played Darth Vader in Star Wars, but was more proud of his work saving lives until the day he died.
George Lucas actually rearranged or delayed some of the shooting of Star Wars so D could nip back to the UK to film the Green Cross Code ads and then go back to the US and continue Darth Vader
When I was in primary school (2001-2008) the hedgehog one was taught to us yearly. We all got given various sized reflective hedgehog stickers and key rings to put on our school bags and little strips to put on our coats.
This is why jaywalking isn't a big deal in the UK. Because we are drilled in how to safely cross a road or ride a bike on the road at a young age, even taught at school. It's always best to teach at young age before bad habits are adopted.
I think they still should make that a thing as alot of kids and adults still get ran over alot in UK just in my area alone I hear it happening alot or they need more crossings added at least
Same. The screaming, the thunk of one head hitting another, and the shot of the boy leaning forward behind his mother. As soon as I saw the last one my stomach just dropped and I knew what was coming. I can't believe that came out in 1998, the better part of 30 years ago and it was seared into my mind.
The most traumatic ad i saw was when a whole class of nursery children were out in the woods having a lovely day exploring, then a drunk driver crashed & rolled over them. That one took my breath away
Yep these were FULLY played on TV, during times kids would be watching. They were meant to traumatise 6:17 I remember this one coming on the TV and from then I have never crossed a road without looking
Because I grew up with these ads I am desensitized to the effects. Seeing you who have not had safety ads like these react just proves here in the UK we have had the reality of simple safety or the worst could happen drummed into us from an early age.
@PaulDee-k4p Another thing, the UK has is a totally different drinking culture. I was born there, but grew up in Canada and drinking culture was just 'go out and get hammered'. I've never driven, so i've never obviously driven drunk, but I know I rode with drunks when I was a kid. The drinking culture is so different there plus you have neighborhood places.
@purplefood1 Me too, now but my friends don't. It was a different world back in the dark ages. Unfortunately, in my work with MADD, I see that it's really not improving but the awareness is FAR more prevalent than it was in days of yore.
@purplefood1 same, but the issue was, years ago, while driving feeling drunk would likely have still been taboo, a couple of drinks, if someone still felt fine, would often be seen as fine. The trouble is, even if you still don't feel like the alcohol has had an impact on you, it slows your reaction times, hence the video about having a second drink. You might not feel drunk, or even a little tipsy, but it doesn't mean it couldn't make you more likely to have an accident. That's the message it was trying to pass on to people. Videos like this made people stop and think.
I think it is important to show exactly what is happening to make people use their brain. If you look at adverts that just say don't text and drive, you have forgotten that message 3 sec later. If you look at adverts like this, they are stuck in your head and you might actually change your behavior due to it. That is what is important in the end.
My dad, when he taught me traffic rules (I was 13), always said: "You have to drive as if there were only murderers on the road and you were the target." I am 56 now and I still drive like that. And that is what I taught my children.
Safety PSA in the uk were basically treated as an extreme horror genre for decades. How much visceral gut punch can you get into under a minute. Make it stick, make it impossible to forget.
When I got my first bike my Dad gave me two pieces of advice - Learn Road sense or die - up to you & forget defensive driving, use paranoid driving - the idiots are out to kill you. He bought me the Police Advanced Drivers Training Manual for bikes. He was an ex biker. Knew his stuff.
I was always taught that a good driver accounts for the fact that everyone else is a muppet, it's some of the best advice I have ever had and regularly helps me avoid collisions lol
Safe to say poor Taylor was absolutely disturbed by the end of this video! As I’m from the UK, I’ve seen every one of those adverts, now I realised why I was traumatised as a kid 😅😂😂
Seeing as how our effective ad video was, I was expecting this time at least for this to be upsetting. But you can expect it and still be completely shocked. I definitely see how one could be traumatized as a child haha
The Julie knew her killer one was fucking crazy back in the I was like 5-6 and still remember seeing that, and it was like a meme is today it was became like pop culture reference for a few year
Forever haunted by the girl from the If you hit me at 40mph advert. I’m 30 now I don’t think I’ve seen it since I was 12 and it still gets stuck in my head
Same! I know the video is 40 and 30 but I still think of her bones clicking back into place as I make sure to go at 20 past a school! I was about 15 when that advert was on and didn’t learn to drive til I was in my late 20s but I still think of that video all the time
When i passed my uk bike test 30 years ago, the instructor said "Congratulations, in a short while you will probably know some dead people." It took a year, and he was right.
@jinxterx There's a whole sub section of road safety PIFs specifically for motorcyclists (for all road users to look out for them and the like) on the road in the UK, there was only a couple in this compilation, because they make up a huge percentage of road deaths relative to being a very small percentage of overall road users. Basically the instructor was saying 'congratulations, you're now a rider, you're going to get to know more riders, and some of them won't live much longer'. The fact it only took a year is sad to hear, but it brings all those ads into perspective at least.
The UK didn't fuck about with its safety messages. I grew up in the 80s in the UK and I am NEVER having a deep fat fryer. The safety adverts traumatised me for life.
I think the worst ones were the ones for not trespassing on railways, they definitely traumatised me as a UK kid in the 80s... I think we even had a special assembly so they could show us one at school.
I was in yr6 in 91 and we were given a book with cartoon illustrations by quentin Blake and one of the stories was a boy being decapitated when sticking his head out the train window.
@J_Degrees I saw that episode of the Young Ones too! Jokes aside, I think we had the same book when I was at school in the early 90's too. Actually I think they may have played that scene for us when they did a lesson on how not to get mutilated by several hundred tons of fast moving, wedge shaped steel.
@kage2701 sooo many dangers & they gave us colouring sheets too with instructions to circle all the hazhards. No wonder theirs so many people struggling with anxiety!
Hi there this is Dean from the UK when these adverts were shown they used to work well people pay the attention they don't show them anymore I think they should bring new ones out 😔
Folks aren't staying safe so these videos are totally important. I remember them from my time as a child - railway safety, road safety, stranger danger - keep safe kids!
My dad had seen some sad things in his 5 years as a firefighter. He has pulled dead bodies out of cars, out of houses, but he still gets up and does the job. This is what we need to remember too. If you cause death, someone has to deal with it, Physically or mentally.
I worked in a UK call centre for a big bank. We were instructed to immediately terminate any call where the person was driving. No exceptions for hands free, headsets, whatever. We would not be culpable for that. MORE people should act like this. If you KNOW your friend is driving - why are you texting or calling them? Your text can wait 20 minutes. If it's urgent, your friend can pull over and call you back.
I work in a GP and I do that. even if I was 💯 sure it was on a laud speaker, imagine the amount of attention that is taken away from the driving if someone has to answer questions about their own health and related concerns. once a guy told me he was late for his appointment with the gp, that he is driving to the practice right now, so he was also rushing and probably speed driving🤦🏽
@WinstonSmith19847 Hmm, not all arguments, some I deserve no doubt. But that may be why I get into some arguments as it could be seen as being confrontational, while I'm just blunt but relaxed.
A lot of old-school UK safety adverts were very frightening to a child. And you can bet that we paid attention. If you're going to try to pass on a life-saving message, you can't be shy about it.
I remember all these public information films. They’re from a time when society cared about each other. Today kids just walk out with their mobile phones in hand as if they’re immune to death.
13:05 The sound you're referring to is called a death rattle and it's caused by air getting trapped in the throat. It's creepy in that ad and equally unpleasant to hear up close.
The train tracks and electric ones were brutal too. You saw every bone break, every bit of their skin burn. It hit home and we're all still alive because of it lol
I remember our PSAs. Whenever I watched one I would go silent and sit and think for a while after in my living room. It would stay with me. We need these back. The more shocking the better. If they save one life because that person sits back and thinks in their cosy living room, it is worth it. I have always admired these PSAs, not just the driving ones. I hope you discover more. They need to be serious, they need to be horrific because real life tragedy is not censored or seen through rose tinted glasses. It is brutal.
From the first time I saw this in the UK, I have been completly frustrating to anyone I drive, saying if you don't wear the belt, you walk.... every time.
remember click clunk vaguely, I remember the general frustrations from some of my parents friends about seatbelts becoming a legal requirement. still know people their age who think seatbelts are stupid :S
My kids have heard it from me often enough and the one time my daughter unbuckled her seatbelt while we were driving and I instantly pulled over. She asked why we stopped, I said the car doesn't move if your belt is undone.
I remember that last one vividly- the one where she "knew her killer". It hit so hard that ever since whenever this was on I always insist on people in the back wearing their seat belt as I always do.
It obviously worked because when I lived abroad, my friend noted that they knew if a Brit was in the back of their car because they immediately put their seatbelt on. I found "Julie" and she understood why.
My biggest fear is driving. I'm not careful enough, and I know it so I will never drive in my life . I'm not afraid for my life, but for someone else's life, I can take .
That's how I feel about driving bigger vehicles. I drive a motorcycle and a car and my dad keeps asking me to get a lorry driving licence or a bus one. I don't think I ever will. Felt it was even too much coming from the motorcycle to the car as i've been drving bikes since i was 16 and did't get my car licence until a couple of years ago, so I even avoided that for 23 years
Yeah @TheGlovener1985, most of the time, on a bike, you know you're unlikely to hurt anyone other than yourself if you make a mistake, or don't pay attention. Driving a two tonne death wagon, not so much.
@Drago_Whooves Yep. My instructor told me when we first started driving that you are ultimately responsible for everyone in that vehicle, as the one with power. So if anyone is injured or dead, it's your fault no matter how it happened. Also he added if your instructor deliberately doesn't put their belt on to catch you out and you drive off, you fail the test, but obviously that's beside the point. It's just always stayed with me, make sure everyone is belted up before you move off. I never noticed it when that last advert was on TV as I was only a young teen and knew nothing of driving, but seeing it now, Julie's son has barely got in before she moves off, it's scary how many people ultimately do that because they're impatient.
That one and the "have a drink have a drive..." 2 adverts that traumatised me as a kid and stick with me today. I cant listen to that song anymore. Have to instantly turn it off
@MadMaxPuppy I have a couple of pieces of music permanently attached to PIFs as well. Any time I hear the music, those PIFs just start playing in my head. :) I just found the one the music is stuck from. It's called 'Shame' from the DOE for Northern Ireland. Don't watch it if you're sensitive to them. It's up there with 'Julie', if not worse. A child dies from a drink driver, but there's a build up to make it personal for the viewer too. A lot of the NI ones are worse.
We don’t mess about in the UK when it comes to promoting road safety. They can be truly gut wrenching and upsetting at times but they work for the most part .
If the UK were not messing about when it comes to road safety there would be a lot more footpaths beside country roads. Roads that I used to cycle on as a child in the early sixties are now deathtraps for anyone walking or cycling.
@Dafmeister1978 Play Safe is STILL shown in some Schools, normally Church Schools or Private Schools, but it Works! it makes the Children very cautious around Electricity! 1978 or not, its Still Effective, so it needs to go back into Circulation in Mainstream as well!
All the schools in my area used to do a big road safety event every few years with the local police and THINK! people. They would get the whole school on buses and take us to a local theatre, and then proceed to talk to us live, and show these kinds of road safety videos. The whole atmosphere was shocked silence and sombre contemplation. The parts that stick with me are the live talks. They had police, fire and rescue and paramedics on stage talking about the timelines of real crashes they had attended locally, along with stories of attempting to treat people in critical condition and having to deal with seeing injuries incompatible with life (seeing the caved in skulls of children, severed limbs, people split open). The officer who had to deliver the news to the family of the deceased in one such crash described the mother's howl of agony and loss. They showed happy pictures of the smiling child and father from before the crash that killed them both. It was hard to see these grown men in uniform choking back the tears as they recalled what happened and how it affected them. Then a man not in uniform, but in t-shirt and jeans walked on stage. He introduced himself, and described what he was doing that morning. He was running late and had a job to get to and had lost control of his vehicle. He had been the one who caused the fatal crash. He was the reason that man and child are gone, and he was here of his own volition to make sure that kids who are soon to be driving don't repeat his mistakes. The whole theatre was just sobbing as he described the events. Kids were fainting in the aisles and every sentence had a 20 second or so pause between them because he could hardly speak through the lump in his throat. I've never felt such collective sadness outside of funerals. The bus back to school was dead silent and they gave everyone the afternoon to just sit and be and talk to one another. No lessons. It really did shock us, but it worked.
You know...I've lived near a school for the last 20 years or so, and I've noticed more and more kids just wandering out in front of cars along our street, and I've seen more than a few get hurt because they just have no road sense at all. I wonder if at least part of the reason is that they don't really watch TV and so aren't exposed to these PSAs as much as we were...when I was growing up in the 80s, these things were (rightly) absolutely terrifying.
Couldn't agree more; school children today seem to have no road sense at all. When I was at school we had the Highway Code drilled into us, cycle proficiency lessons, road safety classes.
My (bicycle) route to work takes me between two secondary schools and invariably I'm sharing paths with kids walking to school in the morning- crossing a couple of busy roads, and following a paved tram line - and the number of kids walking towards me with their heads buried in their phones I'm amazed I haven't found one dead on a road crossing, or under a tram
This is why the British are unique and possess a great resilience, exemplified by our ability to watch even the most graphically detailed advertisements without so much as a flinch, simply carrying on with our day but taking in the warning!
The scariest part about no.4 is that it didn't play in the evenings, it would play during the day. I used to watch Cartoon network a lot as a kid and the advert would be on during advert breaks a lot of the time during the day. When it comes to PSAs, our country doesn't pull its punches
A six year old girl in my area in the UK got ran over last week. She sadly passed away. You never realise how often things like this happen. The cctv footage haunted me. It wasn’t even the drivers fault. The girl ran onto to the road and the driver couldn’t brake in time. It was an unfortunate accident. I can’t imagine the trauma the driver is going through and the grief the girl’s parents are going through. Always ALWAYS teach your children to look both ways when crossing and always stay alert if you’re the one driving R.I.P little angel 💔🥀
04:29 - oh dear folks, yes... yes that was on TV in the UK. A lot of Europe had similar equally gruesome or emotional-gutpunch like things on back then. They didn't feck around with road safety :D
They are still in use in some Private and Church Schools. Network Rails New Campaign "Stay off the Tracks" is every bit as Heavy Hitting as the 1970's Nightmare Inducers as well... so... it does seem they are coming back!
I'm a child of the 70's and our PSA'S were legendary. I had never seen the camera phone footage one before but I remember no. 1. My dad's carpool colleague always made people wear seatbelts in the back seat. Everyone became so much more aware after *Julie knew her killer*
We thought we were watching ads-turns out we were watching trauma with a message. 😳
Which one hit you the hardest? And yes, we’re still recovering.
💬 Drop your favorite UK PSA below & don't forget:
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Number 3 was 1 of my faves
Hope you remembered to Stop, Look, and Listen on your walk!
The most brutal ones that I remember were shown in schools and on TV in the 70's and 80's, we had people visit the schools around spring time to show us videos about electricity sub stations and pylons, canals and rivers, or the railway tracks, because they knew in a few weeks once summer started we'd all be outside behaving like idiots.
A lot were probably never backed up to other media before the tapes perished unfortunately so I don't know how many of them survived.
But I guess if people survived longer than the videos, they did their job.
Thanks for the reaction though, it was interesting to watch, I think sometimes we're a little jaded to these over here.
All the one(s) with kids hit me the hardest ... and, as a Brit, I would remember when I was those kids age(s) in the 1970s - I/we would run across the roads in my hometown while playing It/Tag/1-2-3 😮 Thankfully, no road accidents, but it wasn't for the lack of trying - kids do stupid stuff and I'm very aware of that as an adult car driver (age 59 now) 😊
These are very tame, try the "DOE Irish Road Safety" psa's. There is one called "Mess" which is only about a minute long but you will remember it for the rest of your life.
The question shouldn’t be why are European PSAs so hard hitting but why AREN’T US ads this impactful?
Yeah, here in the UK we don't believe that public safety videos should sugar coat it at all. They will aim to traumatise the heck out of you
Like the drink aware advert of “Batman” climbing the scaffolding to get a balloon..
Amazing!
Especially GenX era...
We certainly don't beat about the bush. Some things are too important to tiptoe around!
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Dont do nothing
These ads stopped over 10 years ago due to "budget cuts". Which is a shame. There's a generation of young drivers who never had the shit scared out of them!
Bring them BACK!! BRING THEM BACK.
They don't even need to make new ones. Just show the old ones. There's about 20 of these that are still very relevant. (Maybe the "Clunk Click" one is a little old now)
Yes. These were SO effective at reducing road deaths. The standard of driving is reducing and the number of cars on the road is increasing. It's ridiculous that the gov't isn't spending money on getting PSA like these into the mainstream channels.
Wouldn't work these days as people don't really watch TV anymore 😅
@ghostparty2062RUclips. Prime. Cinemas. There are still screen ads everywhere, just in different places.
It's worth noting that none of these videos had disclaimers at the start. You'd be watching funny adverts for McDonald's and Fosters beer, then all of a sudden, BOOM, dead children.
One of the worst road safety PSAs I saw was one that deceived you into thinking it was for advertising a new car model by Mitsubishi or Holden or Nissan. And then, wham! I couldn’t even trust car commercials after that one…
That is why it works it's supposed to shock you not wrap you in fluffy rainbow blankies with a hot chocolate how are kids ever gonna get by if they're clueless about the world
stop being woke, they were graphic for a reason and made and aimed for children.
@JonathonPringle-g8t3t its not being woke, that is the point of the comment. the point is to acknowledge that they come out of nowhere because accidents happen seemingly out of nowhere. this wasn't a "woke comment", this was literally to point out that accidents don't have a disclaimer, so these PSAs dont have one either.
@JonathonPringle-g8t3tnobodys being woke mate calm down, is woke just always in ur head? Is that all you think about?
As a Brit, I strongly believe that UK TV should bring back Public Safety Films. If you thought the road ones were bad you should see the ones about swimming in quarry's, talking to strangers, messing about near pylons and electricity sub-stations and taking rubber boats out in the ocean! We don't teach basic safety rules anymore.
Nice to see your reactions :) They also made me feel a bit sick when I saw them on TV years ago.
I was thinking that. There were more disturbing safety commercials from the past about things other than road safety.
There's the ones you mentioned, also those about fireworks, and playing on frozen lakes.
As a fellow Brit I completely agree
Ditto agree, these stuck in your mind. New one's should include drink spiking, the 'ask for' and deffo more txting
The one that really stuck with me was the (recent ish?) one about train tracks. Think tracks, think train, I think the slogan was. A family on a walk playing eye spy and one of the kids has a T word, and the other child guesses train as she steps onto the tracks... and gets hit. Horrific, and now I'd never step onto tracks without thoroughly checking for trains.
@Marzi29 I just looked that one up on here, and watched it. It's sightly reminiscent to the one in the 70s where a child ran into the road and was struck by a car.
The same thing happened there, with the screen going blank at the point of the impact. Only that one was more dramatic than this.
The boy's mother screamed out his name in horror, and dropped a pack of eggs onto the pavement. That added realism to the sheer trauma of the situation.
The “Julie knew her killer” ad caused me to almost completely fall out with a family member who tried to refuse to wear a seatbelt in the back of my car. I basically refused to move until he had it on, because that ad stuck for me. I guess that means the shock tactics actually work.
Mine was the "John will die in his sleep" one, because my dad loved road trips.
I refuse to start with anyone not properly seated and belt on. The best argument I found is "I'll make you pay the fine, but the point on my license is gonna cost you a lot more."
@Argosh As a driver (in the UK) you are only responsible for children under 14 years old. After that age the passenger is fined, not the driver. Also, seat belt offences are non-endorsable meaning that they don't result in points on your licence. I would just stick with the "I'm not driving anywhere until you put it on for everyone's safety" approach.
What about the one where the man took the body of the boy he had killed drunk driving everywhere he went. That was really upsetting
@Ada-Doom That's in this video but he's not taking the body everywhere, he's seeing it all the time due to guilt.
Being a 45 year old Englishman, I thank these psa's for knowing hardly anyone who has been hit by a car.
Same here. They should start bringing them back
They should do a new one as so many people walk into the road texting or with headphones on.
@halsalljustinthey never went away. It's amazing that people think they did. They just aren't always smash-em-ups because that doesn't always work according to past research.
@MarkPentler they totally worked. Eff research.
These were the videos that kept us alive. We need these to come back for a generation who are busy looking at phones and wearing headphones. In 3 years 3 kids have been hit by cars near me.
"we hope you guys are ready for 21 of the BEST road safety adverts from the UK", OMG these poor sweet people have no idea what they are about to watch
I knew Julie would be in there. Poor sweet people indeed.
Ha Ha Ha, the Best of British
As soon as I started watching i knew julie would be #1 and all I could think was you think thiese are hard hitting... wait till you see julie, it was on tv when I was 15/16. And thiese was not on late at night.. they was on all day and night.
They really need to bring these back, scare the cr*p out of the teenagers now driving who think they are invincible.
The greatest thing about your posting this video is that there will most likely be someone else watching that will change their behaviour as a result of watching with you and a life will be saved.
Don't bet on it.
I think I may have saved a couple of lives in california 25 years ago. As part of my course to be a driving instructor, I sat in on a driver's ed class and the lecturer was talking about the importance of seat belts. So when it came to me to speak I told them about the pregnant woman who crashed right outside our hospital while not wearing a belt. She was 8 months and we had to perform a C section to remove the dead baby in order to save her life........the baby was nearly cut in half by the steering wheel....Wear a fekkin seat belt I told them. @ASMRyouKidding
@JadeDoreen Actually people who had been though similar situations lobbied for the ads to stay on tv, because them being reminded was a small price to pay for the chance of stopping someone else having to live though it.
Not me..I’m putting my foot down.
@ Yup, so did some of the drivers.
As a millennial growing up in the UK i can confirm this ads worked, it's just a shame they don't have effect ones like this anymore due to complaints ofcom received saying they were too traumatic , but i see it as that is the point to shock people into changing
Yes! I was thinking the same thing. Shd stay as they were
It wasn't Ofcom that got the compannts, it was the ASA. Ofcom only deals with the actual programs, wheres the ASA deals with anything in the ad breaks (including public service/government founded ones)
Remember the Irish one that Russell Howard showed with all the little kids on a school trip to the woods?
@nostalgicopening3793 oh yeah sorry i always get those two mixed up
@nostalgicopening3793 ahhh right
The joke goes " I hope I die like my grandfather, in his sleep peacefully...
And not screaming like his passengers".
It's Why our sense of humour is the way it is.
😂 good one
The late Bob Monkhouse
Here in the U.K. we need these adverts back as people are getting injured due to these things
Injured & killed, anything they might have saved on the budget,are taken up by emergency services & critical care to try & treat these people!!
Very sad!!!
The problem is that when these were popular, mainstream television was more prevalent so you could be sure more people see it for a lower cost. Now it’s divided between countless avenues and more expensive.
I agree it needs to be seen. Maybe make it mandatory watching in schools and part of driving tests.
@Sintakhra We used to have them in the cinema before they stopped.
I imagine every single person in the UK knew what was about to happen when they saw "JULIE" and probably said "Julie knew her killer. It was her son". That advert was drilled into us. I like that we have such shocking videos. The fact people talk about it shows it works.
Yep. I remember seeing it when it first aired as a kid. It's stuck with me all these years
The hardest hitting safety advert to date
Used to, Until the ASA had loads of complaints about how graphic they were (duh that was the point! lol)
We don't get this stuff now sadly... When we could do with now more than ever! Not just your normal TV adverts like back then, Now streaming is a thing this would have a huge impact imo.
You are correct. As soon as I saw Julie, I mumbled Julie knew her killer.
Yep.
The number 1 had such a big impact, I remember when my sister Julie got her license which was 9 years after the ad came out she used to say all the time “belts on this Julie doesn’t want to know her killer”
😂 love it
I’m stealing that 😂😂😂
We live in the UK. My teenage Son would not wear his seat belt in the back seat of our car . My wife Julie would look at him with steely eyes and say to him " Put your seatbelt on, Julie knew her killer!"
Because of that conversation we are very much all alive.
Absolute boss level 😂
There was an accident near where I live last year. Car pulling out of a sidestreet got run into by an impatient berk in a Merc. Occupants would've been fine, but the dumb kid in the back seat apparently thought seatbelts were uncomfortable and had quietly taken it off while their parents weren't looking. Fortunately they got off light; only a broken arm. Painful lesson, but at least they're alive to learn it.
3:35 Well no, our kids DON'T run out into the road, that's kinda the whole point of these, they work
When it comes to getting the point across, we don't mess around here in the UK. The point in an advert is to shock people and make them listen.
Unlike the USA where they're so scared of offending people (the message being 'Don't do that or Mommy will be a trifle annoyed') we are a lit bit more blunt in order to get the message home (the message being 'Do this and you're well and truly fucked'). You tell me which message has the more impact?
And we don't mind ... too much.
There are complaints but most of us see the value in shocking for a PSA.
Regular ads can't do it though.
Ireland as well
@ACWhoCares2We have a watershed on tv in the uk too that dictates that strong language such as fuck isn't allowed before 9pm
As a child in the 70s and 80s, the PSAs always hit hard and were drummed into us. I'm still here, so they must have done something right.
Do you remember the electric pylon & don't go in the water vids. Terrified me but worked.. 😅
@karenphillips2092 yup, still haunting. but they worked!
80's and 90's me. The one's I saw as a kid I know instantly and teens laughing, I knew who and felt the need to cover the screen.
Dont climb a style with a loaded shotgun, dont play around farmyard machinery, the little wellies left standing in the mud with no child.
You're either naive, or really meant you don't know anyone killed by being hit by a car, neither do I, but I was born in 1964, when I first got hit by a car I was 7 & responsible for getting my siblings 4 year old Boy & Girl Twins, home from school & until mum finished work.
A divorced mum of three she did as society expected, worked 6AM-2PM one week, 2PM-10PM the next & I smart self-educated boy, to adult ability according to "School Reading Test" with a dictionary by age 4, became the mum for 8 hours a day from age 6.
When the boy ran without looking, I tried to catch him, the police car missed him & I'm also blind from birth in my left eye, ran into the side of the car & survived by pure luck without injury, fully aware of my mistake, but I was reacting on instinct.
2nd one around age 16 to 18 I was on my bike Trying to overtake a Bus as it set off, I was in the driver's blind spot, when the bus hit my bike & it was crushed under the front wheel, but again I escaped without injury, because I fell/jumped off. Lightning does strike twice.
We don't see ads like this anymore. In some ways I think we should, because most of them are still relevant today.
The conservative govt cut the money for them to pay for tax cuts for the rich
I agree, I think even more so in todays day and age
They don't always work (we have research on this and it isn't down to "woke" or whatever gammons say).
There are better ways to change behaviour.
Every so often, they should reinforce them. However, people aren't watching TV like they used to. So they'd have to get social media to play them.
They do exist, but most people are watching on catchup or ignore the ads, so never see them.
This is the one downside about no longer watching live TV - not that live TV has ads like these anymore. But they were super effective on me as a kid - that girl against the tree lives in my head.
PSAs in the UK all hit hard. For good reason.
Of course as a motorcyclist you need to take particular care, but the point of those ones is to say, "Everyone please take more care".
Absolutely!!
Truth! If you sanitise the message then you dilute the message. British PSAs do *not* f*ck about.
Yeah, as an adult car driver (aged 59, now) and someone who did ride a motorcycle for a couple of years (about 10 - 15 years ago), I still remember the PSA ads saying ... 'Think once, think twice .... think bike'. Noticably, those ads weren't in the 21 that were compiled for you - so, remember, it could have been even worse (better ?) 😅 I do remember most of those PSAs in the compilation, though and it appears (from USA and Canadian reactors that I've seen) that our PSAs tend to be more hard-hitting than those across the pond 😊
All the way through the preceding videos, which were all good, I wondered if the Number: 1 would be ‘Julie’. That one has always stuck in my memory, ever since I first saw it on TV.
The one thing I wish each and every driver would have realised they need to do is keeping track of things they saw. You can only look in one direction at any time. There are obstructions everywhere. Other road users don't pop out of existence the moment you don't see them anymore, so don't act like they do. The bike/motorcycle/car/kid you saw 10 seconds ago is still somewhere.
Seeing your reaction to the animated one thinking 'Oh they do not know what's coming'.
Our public safety videos are legendary.
I will never ever go near a slurry pit or try to save my frisbee from a pylon. My fellow Brits of a certain age will get me.
Im to young for the pylon one really but they showed that to us in science class for some reason. I also remember one where a girl hits the telephone lines saying its only the telephone line before getting a shock and my whole class bursting out laughing😂
@hooobbit6776they used to show them to us in primary school in the 80s. We'd initially be mocking the flares and 70s hair cuts, then the horror would set in as everyone died! Still not as traumatic as watching Watership Down as a 'treat' one afternoon though!
Or get caught between two train carriages connecting. That one haunted me as a child.
Yup, I won't wander into grain silos either lol
We should make a safety warning video about the UK's safety videos to be honest. 😀
The one I remember most is the Frisbee and the electric.
6:32 they showed these on TV, a lot of them were shown during children’s TV. You’d be sat watching your kids shows after school and a road safety advert or one about not playing on farms and not drinking things from unmarked bottles would come on between the shows. The adverts would also be shown in schools, scout groups etc. They wanted us alive, terrified but alive.
Apaches: Traumatising Britain since 1977.
@ and The Finishing Line, also 1977, about why it’s dangerous to play on railway lines. No punches were pulled.
They are Still shown in some of the Church and Private Schools, I remember, from the Ten's, Play Safe (1978) being shown to the Year 2 Children to stop them playing near a Substation! I wonder if that is why Children from those Schools are rather more Cautious than the ones who have been to mainstream, have only had modern, soft, coddling films shown to them, and seem to be almost Oblivious to Danger! We need to get the Old Heavy Hitters back into Mainstream! better a Terrified Child than a Tragedy!
@ I remember around that time, might have been 1979, one of the boys in my year was hit by a car when he ran into the road without looking. Fortunately, he lived and only suffered a broken arm and some serious cuts, that required surgery to close and a few weeks convalescence. On his first day back he was brought to the front of morning assembly and had to show us his scars and tell us how much pain he’d been in. We were all a lot more careful crossing the road after that.
@ Oh My Goodness! thank goodness he was ok! good thing you all learned from that! Again, showing why we need hard hitting PSA's, as Children are often Oblivious to Danger and I am only glad your mates inattentiveness did not lead to worse!
25:32 The girl's double 'donkey bray' scream lives in the psyche of ALL Brits my age.
The best anti drink driving advert I ever saw was a wrecked car that was put on display at the entrance to a barracks in Yorkshire. It had belonged to a Sgt Major who crashed and died while drunk. Every christmas, the commandant put it on a platform for everybody to see as a warning and a reminder.
We had one put at entrance to our base in Norfolk as well every xmas time with a dummy hanging out of windscreen and notice don't drink and drive.
Yep, I remember one or two outside the barracks when I was at 23 PNR Regt Bicester. & again at DST.
We have a crashed car campaign in our city every summer. Another thing we do (I do talks at high schools re: drinking and driving) is while I'm in doing the lecture, we have four of their classmates not attend. So half way through the talk, the police come in (all of our EMS teams are there) and tell everyone that their friend was drinking and crashed. So we all go out into the schoolyard and we have a crashed car, the person who was driving is being arrested (the driver often isn't hurt), one is being 'treated' by paramedics and the others are under tarps. With the help of their drama dept. it looks pretty real.
Think every base had the drink drive wreck display at Christmas.
The advert that scared the crap out of me was the 1 where a car skids sideways a road hits a curb and rolls upside down through a hedge & rolls right over a group of young school children on the other side frightening
When I was in school we used to have people come in and do talks about road safety and they actually played the “Julie knew her killer” advert to us. I remember being so traumatised that anytime I went in the car with my mum I would make a point of not sitting behind her. Even though I was wearing a seatbelt I wouldn’t risk it. I remember that advert being really shocking at the time and everyone was talking about it because not many people realised that you could kill someone that way in car crash.
Yeah that one was brutal, everyone thought it was gonna be a domestic violence thing then boom.
As a former motorbiker. the advice i got with my first bike stayed with me forever, and that was to treat every other road user as if they were blind, the only person looking out for you.....is YOU
you're totally correct, but car drivers do need to think more about bikes. Same applies for bicycles.
@syrus3k agreed 👍
My mum's driving instructor said, drive as if everyone around you is an idiot. That stuck with her too. 😆
I thought they might have shown the "Think Once, Think Twice, Think Bike".
@crazyknitter22 same for me. Easy to remember as it's true.
Can we give Julie's "daughter" an oscar already.
I watched some of these as a kid growing up. Another classic was 'Come on Dave, just one more', which has Dave being encouraged by his friends to have one more pint, and then encouraged by his mother to have one more spoon of food when he appears in a vegetative state, both are using the same phrase.
Oh god, I remember that one. Once seen, never forgotten.
@advcroft Indeed. Super effective. It convinced me to not drink and drive before I could drink or drive!
Wow I remember that o e
I thought that would make the list. It was made slightly worse by always being on around dinner time, so if you had the tv on, you had to watch his mum scraping minced beef in gravy off his chin.
THIS! This one gave me nightmares as a kid! Honestly most of the 'warning' adverts of the 90s gave me nightmares, sadistic things they were.
19:00 The reason "post 9pm version" is important on the card for the video is because of something called "the watershed" - after 9pm kiddies are assumed to be in bed and more adult content is allowed.
For Americans, we can show "R-rated" films on TV after the watershed; PG only before (though most PG13 films can be cut to a PG version for before the watershed). As a result, the ads are allowed to be a lot more adult after 9pm (as well as the programs).
"Julie knew her killer" really stayed with me. I was 20.
We need them back on tv
Going back as far as 1971 when I was learning to drive,my instructor always made us aware that when we were approaching an icecream van in the street to slow down and watch out for children,he told us that once a kid as money in their hand they are oblivious to everything but getting that icecream,I'm now 72 and have always slowed down and looked out for children when approaching one.
I think this (about children more interested in ice-cream vans so drivers must be vigilant) was in the copy of my Highway Code when I was new in the UK in 1995. It sticks in my mind.
Anyone else remember the advert about feeling invincible when you’re drunk with the bloke climbing the scaffold or have I dreamt that one??? 😂
Nope that's definitely one
I remember that one too
I remember it but I'm pretty sure it was about taking drugs. Even if it wasn't, it put me off ever wanting to take drugs 😅
@ was it talk to frank!?
It’s still the first thing I think about every time I see scaffolding, so it definitely did its job!
As a motorcyclist, you have to treat every car on the road, as if they are being driven by stupid people, & out to kill you. Just for your own safety.
When I passed my test 40 years ago the Instructor told me just treat everyone as an idiot and you will be fine!!
True. That's why I stopped riding. Too many idiots on the road. Not worth the risk.
I have a friend that are a surgeon. He calls motorcyclists "organ donors".
As a car driver, you have to treat every motorcyclist on the road as if they were driven by selfish morons that believe that they own the road. Just for your own safety.
@jedislap8726 As a responsible bike rider that is the attitude you have to have for car drivers. Lost count of the times I've nearly been wiped out by idiots driving cars through no fault of my own. I drive large vehicles for a living as well so I know what I'm talking about. Too many fools on the road!
Reminds me of the joke: I want to die like my grandfather, in my sleep, not shouting and screaming like the passengers in his car. 😂
6:06 that was the whole purpose of these information videos. Sit up and take notice.
Wait was the video real?!?!
The most successful campaign in the UK was actually the "Green Cross Code " man in the 70s who was a 6'5" very large man in a superhero costume who would zap in an teach children how to cross the road safely . Child pedestrian deaths dropped by about 50%.
That man was David Prowse who later played Darth Vader in Star Wars, but was more proud of his work saving lives until the day he died.
I used that exact code to teach my son 25 years after I heard it.
George Lucas actually rearranged or delayed some of the shooting of Star Wars so D could nip back to the UK to film the Green Cross Code ads and then go back to the US and continue Darth Vader
I guess some heroes do wear capes.
When I was in primary school (2001-2008) the hedgehog one was taught to us yearly. We all got given various sized reflective hedgehog stickers and key rings to put on our school bags and little strips to put on our coats.
OMG memory unlocked
I remember that key ring! I wish I still had it, it was super cute.
@destinitra Yep, I remember the pungent smell of those reflective stickers!
We were given those at school in the 80s.
Core memory I live the song.
I remember those!
5:32 The video is a real video. The boy crossing was only crossing the street to go home. Stay safe ❤
This is why jaywalking isn't a big deal in the UK. Because we are drilled in how to safely cross a road or ride a bike on the road at a young age, even taught at school. It's always best to teach at young age before bad habits are adopted.
Used to be. Now that the third world has invaded the UK, they treat British streets like they were still on CALCUTTA.
Also it's not illegal here.
And.. The Green Cross Code man turned up as Darth Vader! Dave Prowse.
Excuse me?! I see, and tbh, with some care, do this ALL the time in my small town.
I think they still should make that a thing as alot of kids and adults still get ran over alot in UK just in my area alone I hear it happening alot or they need more crossings added at least
That actress at the end, who played Julies daughter-- incredible. Just those 2 seconds of her screaming have stuck with me for years.
Same.
The screaming, the thunk of one head hitting another, and the shot of the boy leaning forward behind his mother.
As soon as I saw the last one my stomach just dropped and I knew what was coming.
I can't believe that came out in 1998, the better part of 30 years ago and it was seared into my mind.
The most traumatic ad i saw was when a whole class of nursery children were out in the woods having a lovely day exploring, then a drunk driver crashed & rolled over them. That one took my breath away
was about to say the same thing, surprised it wasn't in this compilation
I acc can’t watch it I’d to turn the channel cuz I cried for so long
I am sure that was an Irish one, but was shown in the UK because it was very effective.
If you have the link to it, please add it and tag us. The person who created this is going to do another
@sanityassassin10 I didnt know that but you're right
Yep these were FULLY played on TV, during times kids would be watching. They were meant to traumatise 6:17 I remember this one coming on the TV and from then I have never crossed a road without looking
Because I grew up with these ads I am desensitized to the effects. Seeing you who have not had safety ads like these react just proves here in the UK we have had the reality of simple safety or the worst could happen drummed into us from an early age.
@PaulDee-k4p Another thing, the UK has is a totally different drinking culture. I was born there, but grew up in Canada and drinking culture was just 'go out and get hammered'. I've never driven, so i've never obviously driven drunk, but I know I rode with drunks when I was a kid. The drinking culture is so different there plus you have neighborhood places.
@cijmo I'd be disgusted if any of my friends chose to drive drunk to the point i might not consider them a friend after that.
@purplefood1 Me too, now but my friends don't. It was a different world back in the dark ages. Unfortunately, in my work with MADD, I see that it's really not improving but the awareness is FAR more prevalent than it was in days of yore.
@purplefood1 same, but the issue was, years ago, while driving feeling drunk would likely have still been taboo, a couple of drinks, if someone still felt fine, would often be seen as fine. The trouble is, even if you still don't feel like the alcohol has had an impact on you, it slows your reaction times, hence the video about having a second drink. You might not feel drunk, or even a little tipsy, but it doesn't mean it couldn't make you more likely to have an accident. That's the message it was trying to pass on to people. Videos like this made people stop and think.
You know it was going to be rough in the 80s when the announcement before "this is a public information film" came on
Clunk, Click, Every Trip. Is a saying that’s been etched on my mind for over 30 years
And now in the UK it's illegal to not wear a seatbelt.
America still has to catch up.
I think it is important to show exactly what is happening to make people use their brain. If you look at adverts that just say don't text and drive, you have forgotten that message 3 sec later. If you look at adverts like this, they are stuck in your head and you might actually change your behavior due to it. That is what is important in the end.
Absolutely!
They used to show us safety videos in school in the seventies, they were terrifying.
I remember seeing a lot of these as a kid. They have a real impact.
My dad, when he taught me traffic rules (I was 13), always said: "You have to drive as if there were only murderers on the road and you were the target." I am 56 now and I still drive like that. And that is what I taught my children.
My instructor said treat all other motorists has idiots and keep away. 😂
@👍
Wisdom
UK information film's dont mess about, i was born in the 70s and they always stuck with me
Especially the smoke alarm one
Wait till they see threads
@lucylane7397 they may need counselling after threads LOL
@gotmygoodelf Was that the Nuclear Holocaust one set in Sheffield? that one is Nightmarish no Question!
@simeonyves5940 that's the one. No wonder it wasn't shown for several years
Safety PSA in the uk were basically treated as an extreme horror genre for decades. How much visceral gut punch can you get into under a minute. Make it stick, make it impossible to forget.
When I got my first bike my Dad gave me two pieces of advice - Learn Road sense or die - up to you & forget defensive driving, use paranoid driving - the idiots are out to kill you. He bought me the Police Advanced Drivers Training Manual for bikes. He was an ex biker. Knew his stuff.
I was always taught that a good driver accounts for the fact that everyone else is a muppet, it's some of the best advice I have ever had and regularly helps me avoid collisions lol
Absolutely, never assume that the driver behind has any sense. @DanRydings
@kerrykirk2515 not just the driver behind, the one in front too, AND the one in the middle.
Safe to say poor Taylor was absolutely disturbed by the end of this video! As I’m from the UK, I’ve seen every one of those adverts, now I realised why I was traumatised as a kid 😅😂😂
Seeing as how our effective ad video was, I was expecting this time at least for this to be upsetting. But you can expect it and still be completely shocked. I definitely see how one could be traumatized as a child haha
@ yes I know exactly what you!! Nothing prepares you for watching something that morbid and realistic
Traumatised but still alive 👍🏻
I have to agree, still traumatised as a UK kid.
Not going to lie I put Julie out of my head but it all came screaming back
The Julie knew her killer one was fucking crazy back in the I was like 5-6 and still remember seeing that, and it was like a meme is today it was became like pop culture reference for a few year
Forever haunted by the girl from the If you hit me at 40mph advert. I’m 30 now I don’t think I’ve seen it since I was 12 and it still gets stuck in my head
Same. That one stays in my head the most when someone is encouraging speeding in a 30mph zone.
Same! I know the video is 40 and 30 but I still think of her bones clicking back into place as I make sure to go at 20 past a school! I was about 15 when that advert was on and didn’t learn to drive til I was in my late 20s but I still think of that video all the time
That advert is so terrifying I remember seeing it a few times on TV then they showed it in school aswell
Just passed my test last month in my late 30s, she is the reason I'm brave enough to have an impatient tailgater behind me rather than risk speeding!
When i passed my uk bike test 30 years ago, the instructor said "Congratulations, in a short while you will probably know some dead people." It took a year, and he was right.
That's pretty dark....
@gglen6574 A bit, but said from a position of experience and warning. I've certainly not forgotten his words.
What did he mean? That you were going to kill someone and you did?
@jinxterx There's a whole sub section of road safety PIFs specifically for motorcyclists (for all road users to look out for them and the like) on the road in the UK, there was only a couple in this compilation, because they make up a huge percentage of road deaths relative to being a very small percentage of overall road users. Basically the instructor was saying 'congratulations, you're now a rider, you're going to get to know more riders, and some of them won't live much longer'. The fact it only took a year is sad to hear, but it brings all those ads into perspective at least.
My driving instructor always told me that I was in charge of a lethal weapon.
They should show these to all high schoolers. Shout out to the person that put that compilation out for us all to see!
In the UK they did show these when the came out
They do. Or at least they did when I was at secondary school.
The UK didn't fuck about with its safety messages. I grew up in the 80s in the UK and I am NEVER having a deep fat fryer. The safety adverts traumatised me for life.
I think the worst ones were the ones for not trespassing on railways, they definitely traumatised me as a UK kid in the 80s... I think we even had a special assembly so they could show us one at school.
I was in yr6 in 91 and we were given a book with cartoon illustrations by quentin Blake and one of the stories was a boy being decapitated when sticking his head out the train window.
@J_Degrees I saw that episode of the Young Ones too! Jokes aside, I think we had the same book when I was at school in the early 90's too. Actually I think they may have played that scene for us when they did a lesson on how not to get mutilated by several hundred tons of fast moving, wedge shaped steel.
The Safety Adverts from the 70s and 80s frightened the life out of us. Who remembers Jimmy throwing a Frisby into an electricity sub-station?
They played us a montage of those things in the 90s in primary school. PRIMARY SCHOOL i was 6. I had anxiety for years because of this shit 🤣
@kage2701 sooo many dangers & they gave us colouring sheets too with instructions to circle all the hazhards. No wonder theirs so many people struggling with anxiety!
Jimmmmmyyyyyyyyy
@nopy99We would run around shouting jimmmyyyy at each other. 😂
I always wondered how he managed to get that frisbee to land and stay where it was in that video
Julie knew her killer wasn't even the full length version
I think over the years, I've seen all of these but the one I could name from the beginning, was Julie. That's really burnt into my brain.
Hi there this is Dean from the UK when these adverts were shown they used to work well people pay the attention they don't show them anymore I think they should bring new ones out 😔
I wish that they still showed these on tv. If it makes just 1 person stop and think twice its worth it
Agreed
The Julie knew her killer always terrified me as a kid and even now 27 years on, it still terrifies me
Folks aren't staying safe so these videos are totally important.
I remember them from my time as a child - railway safety, road safety, stranger danger - keep safe kids!
My dad had seen some sad things in his 5 years as a firefighter. He has pulled dead bodies out of cars, out of houses, but he still gets up and does the job. This is what we need to remember too. If you cause death, someone has to deal with it, Physically or mentally.
Thank you to your dad.
He is truly an unsung hero...
And that's why these people are heroes.
I worked in a UK call centre for a big bank. We were instructed to immediately terminate any call where the person was driving. No exceptions for hands free, headsets, whatever. We would not be culpable for that. MORE people should act like this. If you KNOW your friend is driving - why are you texting or calling them? Your text can wait 20 minutes. If it's urgent, your friend can pull over and call you back.
I work in a GP and I do that. even if I was 💯 sure it was on a laud speaker, imagine the amount of attention that is taken away from the driving if someone has to answer questions about their own health and related concerns. once a guy told me he was late for his appointment with the gp, that he is driving to the practice right now, so he was also rushing and probably speed driving🤦🏽
@wardiya3arbiya So no talking to the passengers when I'm driving? Got it.
UK PSAs will break your heart in service of saving lives, they won't apologise for it.
Honestly I miss this stuff, like it’s hard hitting but genuinly it instilled something in us Brits that made us understand stuff 😅
Find the 90's advert with the phrase, "Come on Dave, just one more!" That was the most horrific one I have seen!
The Brits don't sugar coat
That's why we are not always popular in RUclips comment sections we tell it how it is.
Quite. There's no place for sunny optimism in Public Safety Announcements.
@WinstonSmith19847 we also use words with more than three syllables which confuses the yanks
@WinstonSmith19847 Hmm, not all arguments, some I deserve no doubt. But that may be why I get into some arguments as it could be seen as being confrontational, while I'm just blunt but relaxed.
they were all tame videos. Northern Ireland still UK did them the best ruclips.net/video/PJIDX1kcvGk/video.html
A lot of old-school UK safety adverts were very frightening to a child. And you can bet that we paid attention. If you're going to try to pass on a life-saving message, you can't be shy about it.
I remember all these public information films. They’re from a time when society cared about each other. Today kids just walk out with their mobile phones in hand as if they’re immune to death.
13:05 The sound you're referring to is called a death rattle and it's caused by air getting trapped in the throat.
It's creepy in that ad and equally unpleasant to hear up close.
13:55 She didn't even look ... she just walked out into the road ..
That sounds effect made me laugh 😂😂 like someone dropping a sandwich
The train tracks and electric ones were brutal too. You saw every bone break, every bit of their skin burn. It hit home and we're all still alive because of it lol
I remember our PSAs. Whenever I watched one I would go silent and sit and think for a while after in my living room. It would stay with me. We need these back. The more shocking the better. If they save one life because that person sits back and thinks in their cosy living room, it is worth it.
I have always admired these PSAs, not just the driving ones. I hope you discover more. They need to be serious, they need to be horrific because real life tragedy is not censored or seen through rose tinted glasses. It is brutal.
From the first time I saw this in the UK, I have been completly frustrating to anyone I drive, saying if you don't wear the belt, you walk.... every time.
Clunk click, every trip.
remember click clunk vaguely, I remember the general frustrations from some of my parents friends about seatbelts becoming a legal requirement. still know people their age who think seatbelts are stupid :S
My kids have heard it from me often enough and the one time my daughter unbuckled her seatbelt while we were driving and I instantly pulled over. She asked why we stopped, I said the car doesn't move if your belt is undone.
I remember that last one vividly- the one where she "knew her killer". It hit so hard that ever since whenever this was on I always insist on people in the back wearing their seat belt as I always do.
It obviously worked because when I lived abroad, my friend noted that they knew if a Brit was in the back of their car because they immediately put their seatbelt on. I found "Julie" and she understood why.
UK citizen here. I was familiar with all of these except Julie, though I knew the term "Julie knew her Killer".
I forgot how brutal these are. ❤ from uk. We don’t coat anything in sugar
My biggest fear is driving.
I'm not careful enough, and I know it so I will never drive in my life .
I'm not afraid for my life, but for someone else's life, I can take .
That's how I feel about driving bigger vehicles. I drive a motorcycle and a car and my dad keeps asking me to get a lorry driving licence or a bus one. I don't think I ever will. Felt it was even too much coming from the motorcycle to the car as i've been drving bikes since i was 16 and did't get my car licence until a couple of years ago, so I even avoided that for 23 years
Yeah @TheGlovener1985, most of the time, on a bike, you know you're unlikely to hurt anyone other than yourself if you make a mistake, or don't pay attention. Driving a two tonne death wagon, not so much.
@markbooth3066 yeah exactly.
All the way through I was thinking about Julie knew her killer.. definitely the one that stuck with me the most.
one of the reasons I would refuse to drive if anyone isn't belted up, I only have 4 rules and seatbelt is one of them
@Drago_Whooves Yep. My instructor told me when we first started driving that you are ultimately responsible for everyone in that vehicle, as the one with power. So if anyone is injured or dead, it's your fault no matter how it happened. Also he added if your instructor deliberately doesn't put their belt on to catch you out and you drive off, you fail the test, but obviously that's beside the point. It's just always stayed with me, make sure everyone is belted up before you move off. I never noticed it when that last advert was on TV as I was only a young teen and knew nothing of driving, but seeing it now, Julie's son has barely got in before she moves off, it's scary how many people ultimately do that because they're impatient.
Same.
That one and the "have a drink have a drive..." 2 adverts that traumatised me as a kid and stick with me today. I cant listen to that song anymore. Have to instantly turn it off
@MadMaxPuppy I have a couple of pieces of music permanently attached to PIFs as well. Any time I hear the music, those PIFs just start playing in my head. :)
I just found the one the music is stuck from. It's called 'Shame' from the DOE for Northern Ireland. Don't watch it if you're sensitive to them. It's up there with 'Julie', if not worse. A child dies from a drink driver, but there's a build up to make it personal for the viewer too. A lot of the NI ones are worse.
We don’t mess about in the UK when it comes to promoting road safety. They can be truly gut wrenching and upsetting at times but they work for the most part .
It's not just road safety. I'm 47, and that ad about the kid trying to get his frisbee back from an electricity pylon is still seared into my brain.
If the UK were not messing about when it comes to road safety there would be a lot more footpaths beside country roads. Roads that I used to cycle on as a child in the early sixties are now deathtraps for anyone walking or cycling.
These are tame compared to the Irish/Northern Irish ones. Those have been permanently burned into my brain since childhood.
@Dafmeister1978 "the kid trying to get his frisbee back from an electricity pylon is still seared into my brain.
As was the boy on the pylon!.
@Dafmeister1978 Play Safe is STILL shown in some Schools, normally Church Schools or Private Schools, but it Works! it makes the Children very cautious around Electricity! 1978 or not, its Still Effective, so it needs to go back into Circulation in Mainstream as well!
All the schools in my area used to do a big road safety event every few years with the local police and THINK! people. They would get the whole school on buses and take us to a local theatre, and then proceed to talk to us live, and show these kinds of road safety videos. The whole atmosphere was shocked silence and sombre contemplation.
The parts that stick with me are the live talks. They had police, fire and rescue and paramedics on stage talking about the timelines of real crashes they had attended locally, along with stories of attempting to treat people in critical condition and having to deal with seeing injuries incompatible with life (seeing the caved in skulls of children, severed limbs, people split open). The officer who had to deliver the news to the family of the deceased in one such crash described the mother's howl of agony and loss. They showed happy pictures of the smiling child and father from before the crash that killed them both. It was hard to see these grown men in uniform choking back the tears as they recalled what happened and how it affected them.
Then a man not in uniform, but in t-shirt and jeans walked on stage. He introduced himself, and described what he was doing that morning. He was running late and had a job to get to and had lost control of his vehicle. He had been the one who caused the fatal crash. He was the reason that man and child are gone, and he was here of his own volition to make sure that kids who are soon to be driving don't repeat his mistakes. The whole theatre was just sobbing as he described the events. Kids were fainting in the aisles and every sentence had a 20 second or so pause between them because he could hardly speak through the lump in his throat. I've never felt such collective sadness outside of funerals.
The bus back to school was dead silent and they gave everyone the afternoon to just sit and be and talk to one another. No lessons.
It really did shock us, but it worked.
You know...I've lived near a school for the last 20 years or so, and I've noticed more and more kids just wandering out in front of cars along our street, and I've seen more than a few get hurt because they just have no road sense at all. I wonder if at least part of the reason is that they don't really watch TV and so aren't exposed to these PSAs as much as we were...when I was growing up in the 80s, these things were (rightly) absolutely terrifying.
Couldn't agree more; school children today seem to have no road sense at all. When I was at school we had the Highway Code drilled into us, cycle proficiency lessons, road safety classes.
My (bicycle) route to work takes me between two secondary schools and invariably I'm sharing paths with kids walking to school in the morning- crossing a couple of busy roads, and following a paved tram line - and the number of kids walking towards me with their heads buried in their phones I'm amazed I haven't found one dead on a road crossing, or under a tram
dont forget to blame the parents for not doing their job as well.
@ - true, but that's a bit of an "old man shouts at clouds" thing. My comment was specifically related to these PSAs.
At the school i used to live near the parents were worse. No wonder the kids weren't aware
This is why the British are unique and possess a great resilience, exemplified by our ability to watch even the most graphically detailed advertisements without so much as a flinch, simply carrying on with our day but taking in the warning!
Except none of us even takes the warning
My wife also laughs when nervous. Every time I hurt myself she becomes hysterical 😂
The scariest part about no.4 is that it didn't play in the evenings, it would play during the day. I used to watch Cartoon network a lot as a kid and the advert would be on during advert breaks a lot of the time during the day. When it comes to PSAs, our country doesn't pull its punches
A six year old girl in my area in the UK got ran over last week. She sadly passed away. You never realise how often things like this happen. The cctv footage haunted me. It wasn’t even the drivers fault. The girl ran onto to the road and the driver couldn’t brake in time. It was an unfortunate accident. I can’t imagine the trauma the driver is going through and the grief the girl’s parents are going through. Always ALWAYS teach your children to look both ways when crossing and always stay alert if you’re the one driving R.I.P little angel 💔🥀
04:29 - oh dear folks, yes... yes that was on TV in the UK. A lot of Europe had similar equally gruesome or emotional-gutpunch like things on back then. They didn't feck around with road safety :D
These should be brought back. Never mind imotional trauma to the kids it kept us alive. Child of the 70s & 80s and I'm still here
All snowflakes these days, including the parents, sadly.
They are still in use in some Private and Church Schools. Network Rails New Campaign "Stay off the Tracks" is every bit as Heavy Hitting as the 1970's Nightmare Inducers as well... so... it does seem they are coming back!
@commonsensethinker The "snowflakes" were raised by the people now calling them "snowflakes".
That's just some of them. We do go in for shocking PSAs here. There's more road safety ones and You haven't seen the "worst".
I'm 76 now and remember most of these road safety videos. Thanks for reminding me.
I'm a child of the 70's and our PSA'S were legendary. I had never seen the camera phone footage one before but I remember no. 1. My dad's carpool colleague always made people wear seatbelts in the back seat. Everyone became so much more aware after *Julie knew her killer*
Unfortunately they don’t seem to show these sort if PSAs any longer - driving standards get worse by the year. Coincidence ??
The think! Ads where very dark 😢