Project Yellow Light’s new PSA shows how distractions have only gotten worse for teen drivers

Teenage boys are excitedly navigating young adulthood, love and driving when tragedy strikes in a sobering PSA from nonprofit Project Yellow Light and The Martin Agency, launched on Wednesday. Released for National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, “Love Story” tells the story of a young man who gets in a car with his friend and excitedly tells him about his crush liking his Instagram story. Afterward, to capture the attention of his crush once more, the pair begin to engage in distracted driving behaviors: taking selfies behind the wheel, turning up the music to record a video story and consulting with the driver about what to post. Throughout the film, the anticipation builds, as the driver glances at the phone several times before the accident. That was a strategic approach meant to show how drivers become more confident the more they “successfully” use their devices behind the wheel, said Julian Cohen, associate creative director at The Martin Agency. “We were really careful about how we would portray the accident itself. Is it something that the driver will look at his phone the first time and get in an accident? Probably not, because it’s just not like that in real life,” he told Ad Age in an interview. “Maybe it’s not the first time, maybe it’s not the second time, maybe it’s the third or the fourth because as you keep looking at your phone, you get more and more confident each time.” The pro bono work comes as a new survey from Project Yellow Light shows 86% of drivers 18-24 admit to using social media in their car, while 87% have seen social posts or videos recorded in a car. Project Yellow Light founder Julie Garner, who lost her son Hunter to a distracted driving crash at 16, says the work also demonstrates how distracted driving has evolved beyond texting and driving, as younger generations are much more attached to their devices. “[When I started Project Yellow Light], we started with an anti-texting campaign, because at that time, that was just kind of coming on board and it was a critical problem, and obviously still is. But as social media has grown, it’s just become more and more distracting with handheld devices and our phones,” she said. “This film just goes to show that the distractions never end, and they just kind of keep growing and getting worse in some instances.” The film was inspired by a USA Today article about a truck driver in Arizona who killed five people after crashing on a 55 mph road at 68 mph because he was watching TikTok while driving, said Rushil Nadkarni, ACD at The Martin Agency. According to the Project Yellow Light study, commissioned by Suzy Market Research, 41% of drivers 18-24 admit to routinely clicking on notifications from social media while driving, and 27% drive with their phone in their lap (at an exponentially higher rate than older drivers). The short film is airing across all of Project Yellow Light’s social channels, with an influencer strategy set to kick off once the film launches. More Creativity coverage from Ad Age: Sign up for our daily Creativity newsletter to see the best stories of the day.

Project Yellow Light’s new PSA shows how distractions have only gotten worse for teen drivers

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