A billboard advertisement hanging high above the Gardiner Expressway contains an unusual and morbid invitation.
“Text and Drive,” it says, purporting to be from the “Wathan Funeral Home.”
When you search for Wathan Funeral Home online its website reveals the ad isn’t from a funeral home.
“It is a horrible thing for a funeral home to do. But we’re not a funeral home. We’re just trying to get Canadians to stop texting and driving,” a part of the message on the website reads.
Mylène Savoie, managing director of John St., the ad agency that developed the idea, said she and other staff came up with the idea while brainstorming over lunch several weeks ago, and saw it as an impactful way to reach drivers of any age.
The ad appears at first glance to be encouraging the dangerous behaviour.
“When you use provocative tactics you always run the risk of being misunderstood, some people will be offended or not go to the end of the message to fully understand it.”
But she said response to the ad has been very positive.
Though it’s a bizarre twist on an anti-texting and driving ad, Const. Clint Stibbe from Toronto Police Traffic Services says sadly it is necessary.
“I don’t think it’s going far enough,” Stibbe said. “It’s taking more lives that we can really count.”
Across the province, the OPP said that 69 people died in road collisions in 2015 where distracted driving was at least a contributing factor.
Stibbe said that Toronto police have issued 99,000 tickets for distracted driving since 2010, but still said he believes distracted driving is widespread.
He says that the cause of more than 10 per cent of all collisions investigated in the City of Toronto last year was inattentive driving, which could include distracted driving.
Police and non-profits in other countries have taken far more graphic approaches to dissuade drivers from texting and driving.
In England, a four minute-long ad released in 2012 showed three girls suffering grievous, bloody injuries when their car crossed the centre line into oncoming traffic because the driver was fumbling with her phone.
The Gardiner ad and another posted at Albion Road and Steeles Avenue will be taken down this Sunday, Savoie said.
