Drinking And Driving Wrecks Lives

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Drinking And Driving Wrecks Lives was the tagline to a series of public information films (PIFs) that ran in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s, addressing the problem of drink-driving. Unlike earlier campaigns which focused on consequences to the offender, this campaign was more aimed at showing the devastation that drink-driving can cause to the victims and their families. Storylines and camera techniques (such as the extreme close ups used in the Eyes and Kathy campaigns) were designed to encourage drinking drivers to identify with the people affected by this behaviour, showing that drink driving is not a "victimless crime". There were many PIFs in the series, but some of the best known were:

• Classroom, depicting a class of children who lost one of their own classmates to a drunk driver. The camera is shown moving from the teacher to rows of children, each narrating their reactions to news of the boy's death, ending on solitary child (a close friend of the deceased) at the back of the class seated next to a now empty chair.
• A Fireman's Tale, with Ken Stott playing a fireman who talks to the camera about attending the scene of an accident where a mother and baby had been killed by a drinking driver.
• Real Lives, following a family whose young son has just died as a result of a drink driving accident. We see newspaper clippings about the young boy's death and watch his funeral, including his grieving family and younger brother. His parents are then shown clearing out what had been his bedroom, and they break down in tears as they find his watch.
• Kathy, where the camera shows extreme close up of the face of a little girl watching in horror while her mother shouts and rages at the father, who has been convicted of killing a child while under the influence.
• Recovery, which shows a man trying to teach himself how to walk after being left in a wheelchair after a crash. The film has him attempting to use handrails as his instructor encourages him, but about half-way he finds it too painful and asks to stop.
• Eyes, in which Denise van Outen played a young girl who has been run over by an intoxicated driver. The camera focuses on her blank, lifeless eyes as an ambulance team attempt to revive her. At the end she is pronounced dead, and we hear the driver being taken away by police.
• Pier, a more sedate example of the campaign from 1987, in which a paralysed man talks about the accident which took his mobility. He says his mates have looked after him and they believe he's lucky to be alive, and then he is fed a cup of coffee by his friend.
• In the Summertime, a summer campaign devised to challenge popular misconception that drink driving is only a serious problem at Christmas, the usual time for anti - drink driving PIFs to be shown. With a soundtrack of the Mungo Jerry song In the Summertime (one of the lines of which is "Have a drink, have a drive..."), a group of friends are drinking in the beer garden of a pub on a warm summer's evening. The music suddenly slows down and dies away as we see one pubgoers cease smiling on catching sight of something shocking. We later see a crashed car lying under a tree and the dead bodies of the passengers inside. The slightly different tagline was "In the summertime, drinking and driving wrecks even more lives".
• Christmas Pudding, showing a burning Christmas pudding on a dinner table turning into the wreckage of a burning car, as a family's Christmas dinner is interrupted when the phone rings to inform them that one of them has died in an accident caused by a drinking driver. This advert dates from 1993. Again, the slightly different tagline was; "Drinking and driving wrecks Christmas".
• Dave, a 1995 advert where we see a woman preparing liquid food in a kitchen, with voices in the background of men in a pub encouraging their friend to have another drink - he refuses, saying he's driving, but they urge him "Come on Dave, just one more." The woman is then seen feeding the liquid concoction to her quadriplegic son (played by Daniel Ryan), and when he can't swallow it, she encourages "Come on Dave, just one more...".
• Police Station, which tells the story from a drink-driver's point of view. It focuses on how intimidating the arrest is, and how frustrated the police come across in such a situation. At the end of the advert, a policeman informs the driver that a victim has died, and another policeman offers him a cup of tea in a clearly agitated manner.
• Mirror, featuring a young woman sitting at a vanity table and staring into the mirror as she talks about being involved in an accident where her boyfriend, who had been drinking, crashed their car on the road. She says she would like to leave her boyfriend but doesn't think another man would want her, and turns her face to the light to show horrific scarring resulting from the accident.
• Mark, in which a man talks about his best friend, who is ostensibly "a great bloke" but had too much to drink on a night out and caused an accident which killed a couple, leaving their children as orphans. It challenged public perceptions that you have to be drunk to cause a serious drink driving accident.
• Mates, where the ad is played from the perspective of a critically injured man whose friend was drink-driving. His friend is constantly asking how he is and claiming his innocence, then accepts his mistake and apologises, while medical staff are attempting to treat the man. The advert ends with the driver looking into the camera and saying "We're still mates, right?"
• Another Christmas campaign in the 1980s used a narrative without dialogue, only incidental music. In this short, live-action piece, a young man is asked out for the night by his young, attractive female co-worker. They go to a pub, where - to the accompaniment of an increasingly bombastic and discordant score, alongside a near-montage of moments - the man in particular is seen to drink more and more alcohol. The two then drive home, and - as the music reaches a dramatic peak - their car crashes. The man, shocked into sudden sobriety, is left staring at the slumped and bloodied body of the woman beside him as the music alters to quiet, unsettling chords as the advert ends.

The campaign began in 1987 and was replaced in 1997 by a new slogan, "Have none for the road".