Rising car crash deaths could force companies to rethink stunt driving in commercials
Automakers often display a warning in commercials when showing a car executing incredible stunts: "Professional driver on a closed course. Please do not attempt."
But with deaths from car crashes rising every year, experts are asking if that kind of boilerplate language, which more or less fades into the background as a vehicle burns rubber on the screen, goes far enough.
Last month, the National Transportation Safety Board called for a study of car advertisements, saying the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) should try to determine if there is a link between commercials that show unsafe driver behavior and real-world speeding or reckless driving.
"Nearly one-third of our roadway deaths are speeding related, and this sort of advertising is dangerous and contributes to a culture of speeding that costs lives," said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy in a statement to NBC News. "Everyone — including vehicle manufacturers — shares in the responsibility for safety on our roads."
If there is such a link, it's going to be hard to prove, according to David Zuby, the chief research officer at IIHS. Still, Zuby said his group will work on ways to examine whether there could be a link between crashes and commercials that show dangerous driving.
"It probably doesn't help driver behavior to have everyday cars being shown driven aggressively," he told NBC.
The NTSB's suggestion was one of a series of observations it made in a report about a January 2022 crash in Las Vegas that killed nine people.
Homendy and the NTSB is not suggesting that car commercials were solely responsible for that crash. As the agency's report noted, driver Gary Dean Robinson was impaired by cocaine and PCP, and he had a history of speeding. At the time of the crash, he was driving more than 100 miles per hour on a street where the speed limit was 35. He hit a Toyota Sienna carrying seven people in it, including four children. All seven died, as did Robinson and a passenger in his car.
The NTSB recommended a series of more concrete steps, including that regulators consider implementing "an intelligent speed assistance system (ISA) that electronically limits the speed of the vehicle," and that states make it a priority to reduce repeat-offense speeding.
Meanwhile, experts have been revamping street designs and city plans to discourage dangerous driving and make the road safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Col. Matt Langer of the Minnesota State Patrol said drivers started taking more risks at the height of the pandemic, when roads were relatively empty. The number of drivers on the road has returned to normal, but the manner in which people are driving hasn't improved.