WILD ANGEL BLOG: With Great Power: Werner Herzog's Look at Texting-While-Driving

The team here at Wild Angel Films is not jumping to make a PSA, but if we were, we know what it would address. And we’ve discovered that legendary documentarian Werner Herzog – the last filmmaker you would expect to make one himself – is like-minded. The message must be stated, loudly and clearly: DON’T TEXT WHILE DRIVING. So Herzog has been directing several short videos for a public awareness campaign from AT&T. And he has now expanded that series of videos into a 35-minute film. It’s not light material. It is painful, and painfully necessary viewing. I have seen several PSA’s on the subject, and they mean very little next to this devastating piece of work. We are up close and personal with the lives shattered by this modern phenomenon, and the lives that are now only memory.

Werner Herzog, director of "From One Second To The Next"

The film is linked at the bottom of this piece. If you are a parent, save it for the end of the night, once all are tucked away. It might not be easy to face your loved ones after this. So why watch it at all? Because even if your child isn’t driving a car today, he will be tomorrow. And when tomorrow comes, the number of accidents from texting on the road will be even more horrific. Research shows that between 30 and 43% of teenagers actually text while driving,¹ ² and that is the cause of 1.6 million deaths every year (and 11 teen deaths everyday).² In-your-face awareness is all we can do, because the percentage of teen accidents that result from texting climbs by up to 4% annually.²

So…why is this a reality for our teenagers? Herzog’s film follows the aftermath of 4 separate incidents. For two of them, we never meet and hardly hear about the driver, an unidentified teenager. We are left to wonder – were these young teens too shaken up to be interviewed? What are their lives like now, and what about their generation makes it so easy to bring about this unintended pain and loss?

This writer remembers, back when texting was still somewhat nascent (and was not yet outlawed in 37 states), hearing a thunderous crash on the other side of the fence at a friend’s house. After climbing the fence I found a car on its side, atop a few small trees that absorbed the crash, so that the large tree just feet away didn’t have to. I pulled out of the car a fresh young driver, miraculously unscathed. She had been texting on the windy road, right here in Mount Kisco, NY. It didn’t help that she was a little tipsy also. The car was totaled (it’s pictured below), but that’s just a car. Replaceable. I have not been in touch with her since, but I hope that she is immensely grateful. I hope she doesn’t feel, simply, that she got away with it. Because she didn’t.

Aftermath of texting-while-driving accident here in Mount Kisco, NY

Herzog’s film serves to give us a window into shattered lives; he doesn’t attempt to explore the roots of the problem (perhaps he’s saving material for a larger film). But I feel I must make a minor attempt myself. I have never once texted while driving, but I have had Siri do it for me. No longer. Research out of the University of Utah confirmed that when texting/emailing/web-surfing is embedded into the car functionality through dictation, it’s still a major distraction. Even when hands are on the wheel and eyes are on the road.³ So why does Apple think it’s necessary to bring Siri into cars? And why have I (and you?) been tempted to send texts from the road? I remember when I was considering getting an iPhone, someone encouraged me by saying, “it’s not just about keeping up with the latest, it’s really about being more productive.” Absolutely. But in moderation. Maybe that’s the missing element. Just because we can do so much, we feel that we should. And we are not setting necessary limits on these rapidly expanding capabilities.

And in turn, we are not setting limits for our kids. One more statistic, perhaps the scariest of them all: 77% of teens have admitted to watching their parents text and drive. I was asking, before, what is wrong with the generation of our teenagers, but now the finger has been pointed in the opposite direction. Of course they’re going to text on the road if we’re doing it ourselves, or having the machines do it for us. We teach them impatience and chaos, instead of focus and calm. It’s like we’re telling young Peter Parker, “With great power, comes great urgency. So text as fast as you can!” (check out 2^nd video below for example of this…) The children bound for success are those who will appreciate technology as an added advantage, instead of making it a distraction and a hindrance to safety. Right now it’s our job to teach them the difference.

The kids will get it. With a little proper guidance, they’ll find the moderation and responsibility themselves. Next to Herzog’s film below, you’ll find a short video about an experiment in Belgium, where teenagers were asked to text as a part of their road test. I think it will be clear from their reactions that texting-while-driving is not exactly in their nature.