Holy Sh… Safe happens.

Over the weekend I read an article in the paper that mentioned one of Volkswagen’s TV commercials known as “Safe Happens”. Curious about it, I decided to look it up on YouTube. When I watched the commercial, it made me jump and really caught my attention. In the commercial two guys are rolling down the road, chatting about this and that and just generally chillin' when out of the blue comes this red pickup. Car meets truck. Tires shriek, metal bends with a concussive thud, glass shatters. The two guys fly out of their seats, faces planted into the spreading airbags. The crash is followed by shots of the passengers walking away, dazed but uninjured.

The thing that makes this commercial so intense is seeing the actual passengers being caught off guard (as I was) as they fly into their airbags when they crash, rather than having the camera zoom out or slow-mo like in most movie crash sequences. There wasn’t even any foreshadowing. Apparently these accidents weren’t tricked up in any way. The crashes were shot in one take, using real stunt people and real, non-reinforced Jettas.

At first when I saw this ad I thought it was some kind of parody mainly because they display the smashed up car at the end. The ad really surprised me because I recalled VW’s previous campaigns including “Making friends with your Fast”, and “Un-pimp my Ride” to be humorous and fun. This ad was the complete opposite. Granted that safety is not something to joke about, VW really went for a shock value with these ads. It not only informed its audience of its high safety rating, but also reminded us not to take the power and responsibility of driving for granted.