[engine revving] [engine revving] Male voiceover: We don't have to worry about predators like our ancestors did.

No saber-toothed tigers stalking from the brush.

Narrator: Some car commercials glorify speed and aggression behind the wheel.

Voiceover: There are no more monsters to fear, and so we have to build our own.

What happens when you make power your thing above everything?

You decide fast is never fast enough.

♪♪♪ Narrator: This was plenty fast, and it was not a commercial.

It's a Dodge Challenger blasting into an intersection in North Las Vegas at 103 miles per hour.

It struck a minivan, killing seven members of a single family, four children ages 5 to 15 and three young adults.

The driver of the Challenger and his passenger also died.

Nine lives lost in an instant.

Erlinda Zacarias's four children, two stepchildren, and her brother were in the minivan, returning from an outing at a park, all of them gone now.

Erlinda Zacarias: It is very hard because, since that happened, I feel like I lost everything, you know?

Like, why for somebody to be driving like that?

Narrator: Crash deaths have risen sharply in the US to more than 40,000 per year, along with more than 2 million injured annually.

Safety features in new cars and trucks protect drivers and passengers better than ever.

A growing percentage of those killed are outside the vehicles: pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists.

The US has the highest rate of road fatalities among wealthy countries, as measured by deaths per 100,000 population, 2 1/2 to 6 times the rates of Canada, Australia, and countries in Western Europe.

Even adjusting for Americans logging more miles behind the wheel, the US crash death rate is near the highest in the developed world.

There's no one reason for this, but experts say speed is a factor in nearly 1/3 of these deaths.

Over four years, the California Highway Patrol ticketed more than 89,000 drivers going over 100 miles per hour.

That's just the drivers they caught.

Statistics aside, these days, driving can sometimes feel like being in the middle of a video game.

Meanwhile, our media culture continues to celebrate speed and high-risk driving.

From movies old and new that include street racing and impossible stunts.

♪♪♪ Narrator: To social media and YouTube.

[engine revving] male: Better slow this ----- down, -------, bro.

Narrator: To video games that invite you to run down pedestrians.

There are also car commercials that feature the kind of aggressive high-risk driving that kills people and tears families apart.

Voiceover: New breed, ready to sting.

Narrator: Certainly not all ads are of that kind.

Many emphasize luxury, dependability, or safety features.

♪♪♪ Female voiceover: When it comes to safety, who has more IIHS Top Safety Pick Plus awards, the highest level of safety you can earn?

Subaru.

Narrator: But others are like this.

Male voiceover: And 13 US rally titles.

Danny Harris: Look, there is a pattern across these ads, and the pattern is about recklessness.

It's about inciting violence on a road.

It's about the entitlement of drivers, and it's about putting everybody's safety last except for the person who's behind the wheel.

Narrator: You often see disclaimers in such commercials.

In tiny fleeting type they say, "Don't do the things that we just showed you."

Here, a Lexus driver is adjusting the touchscreen while the vehicle is in motion.

The disclaimer says, "Do not drive distracted.

Always use safe driving practices."

If you couldn't read that, it's okay.

You weren't really meant to.

Here, we're racing an airplane.

Male voiceover: Finally, a reason to wear those aviator sunglasses you've had in the glove compartment all this time.

Narrator: Here, we're racing a speedboat.

Even Prius, the soul of gas-sipping practicality, wants you to know it can burn rubber too.

We reached out to more than a dozen automakers, but none agreed to an interview.

All either declined or did not respond to our requests.

♪♪♪ ♪ We will, we will rock you.

♪ ♪ Sing it now.

♪ We will, we will rock you.

♪ Male voiceover: The new GMC Sierra with hands-free driving.

Michael Brooks: They're so happy that they have been freed from this horrible constriction they've had their whole lives of having to, you know, watch their surroundings while they drive.

They're advertising these vehicles as a lot more capable than they are.

You shouldn't be driving down the road in your Denali partying to Queen.

Narrator: One of the pillars of modern psychology is social learning theory, the idea that people learn from seeing what others do and from observing the results.

When the behavior is exciting or appealing and it doesn't seem to bring negative consequences, we might want to imitate.

When it comes to high-risk driving in popular media, young males, who tend to take more risks and suffer the highest rate of crash deaths, are the group most likely to be influenced.

Male voiceover: Why, for the love of God, build a sedan that goes 200 miles per hour?

Deanna Singhal: We observe other people that we would term models and their behaviors, and there are certain aspects about that that can actually influence whether or not a person imitates that behavior in the future.

When we look at some of these movies, you know, we can see acts of risky driving and aggressive driving.

We see cars rolling down hillsides and people getting out and walking away.

You know, a good example of how movies influence behavior, you know, was the release of Disney's movie, "The Program."

In that movie, one of the scenes was a group of inebriated football players who lay on the street along the street lines, and cars whipping past them, and of course, no one was injured in that scene.

But shortly after the release of that movie, there were two separate attempts to mimic that exact behavior, and in both instances, these individuals were killed on the streets.

Disney then pulled the movie and then removed that scene.

So what's predominantly shown, you know, in some of these commercials are the risky behaviors.

And so we don't see evidence of negative consequences.

We don't see someone being pulled over and getting a ticket.

We don't see the dangers associated with an increased risk of collision with high speed, making it look cool to be racing and doing doughnuts.

And again, no negative consequences.

You know, there's gonna be a certain subset of people who are going to find that appealing and attractive.

And that's something that marketing wants.

Marketing wants you to look at this and say, "That could be me.

I could do that."

The more people are exposed to this information, the more they see it repeated, the more normalized it becomes.

Narrator: If there's any doubt that people sometimes imitate what they see, consider street racing and the explosive increase of street takeovers or sideshows that have plagued Los Angeles and the Bay Area, Houston, Chicago, and many other urban areas.

Participants blockade intersections so that drivers can perform wild stunts while spectators egg them on and record the action on their phones to post on social media.

The takeovers shut down city streets and keep neighbors awake at night.

Sometimes they erupt in fights and shootings or spectators getting hurt or killed when cars go out of control.

Michael: What's missing is, you know, what's been happening for 100 years now are, you know, you're in a crash and you end up 30 feet up, hanging in telephone wires because you weren't wearing your seatbelt, you know, you're burning to death because your vehicle caught fire after a collision.

You went off the road and killed pedestrians.

You, I mean, none of that is ever being shown.

Just the sheer thrill and exhilaration of acceleration, traveling fast, making corners at high speed and the kind of things you see in commercials.

Even though, you know, we say in tiny print at the bottom of the screen, "You shouldn't be doing this," we're gonna show you images of it being okay to do that.

And so there's kind of a--I think there's a breakdown at some point in the minds of some drivers between, you know, the real world where risk exists and this fantasy culture that they've been part of that tells them that such behavior is okay and acceptable.

Peter Norton: The commercial is telling people this is why you should buy this car.

A commercial that's showing a car being driven recklessly is implicitly suggesting to people that this is why this car is worth buying.

We know that the people selling these cars have spent a lot of money on these commercials and have thought very carefully about what it is that will make this car attractive, and if they are willing to bet the money that they spend on these commercials, that suggests to me that these commercials are probably contributing to reckless driving.

Narrator: Some argue for restrictions on ads that feature risky driving, and such guidelines exist in some other countries.

But in the US, the First Amendment provides broad protection for commercial speech.

male: Here at the FTC, when it comes to advertising hype, we've heard it all, and some of it can be a little, uh, over the top.

We've sued many of them and gotten money back for cheated customers.

Narrator: The Federal Trade Commission takes action to stop false or misleading advertising that is harmful to consumers.

But it has shown little interest in commercials that accurately depict what cars can do, even when the ads show risky driving or traffic violations.

Mike Kahn is a Bay Area marketing consultant who wants to do something about this.

He's long been bothered by ads that feature risky driving.

He began to pause TV shows to record them.

Mike Kahn: I think it was a slow, slow boil, perhaps, just-- but it had hit me, why are we able to advertise like this?

I just have an ethical problem with how far this has gone.

Sure, it's true that the car can do this, but this is not what you can do with the car.

Narrator: Eventually he drafted a petition asking the Federal Trade Commission to regulate ads promoting dangerous driving and included video examples of such commercials.

It read in part: "Many car ads on television celebrate illegal activities, including speeding, racing, and reckless driving.

This sends a terrible message, especially to our children and young adults.

It should be illegal to sell cars by promoting dangerous activities.

Repeated viewing of these ads could start to make people think that these crazy behaviors are acceptable--remember, our children are watching too."

FTC officials declined to comment on the complaint.

Joan Claybrook headed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under President Jimmy Carter and later served as president of Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader.

When it comes to car commercials, she thinks government officials should take a page from the anti-smoking playbook.

Joan Claybrook: The auto companies think that advertising speed, showing speed, is an advantage to selling their cars, and I think that's immoral, actually.

It should be that the government has some role to play in informing the public about the implications of these ads, and that certainly isn't a violation of the First Amendment.

I think that the government ought to do counter ads.

Narrator: For close to a century, speed and performance have been a central part of the sales pitch.

Peter Norton: The thing that made a car worth buying was that it was faster than the alternatives.

That was the number one selling point.

If you buy this automobile, you will be able to go faster than you can go when you're riding in an electric streetcar or when you're riding a bicycle.

Narrator: The question sometimes arises, "Why are cars built to go over 100 miles per hour when it's illegal to drive that fast on any public road?"

Michael Schneider: I--and I'm actually dying to ask a car executive this question.

Why does your car--why does the speedometer need to go above, let's be generous, 85 miles an hour ever?

Why does your car need to physically be able to go above 85 miles per hour, ever?

There is no correct answer to that, because the truth is you don't.

You know, going above 85 miles per hour is not safe for anybody, including the driver.

But when you buy a BMW and it says 160, that's cool, man.

You can go double the speed limit almost, and just that alone, that the audacity to sort of put double the legal limit in most states as a default max speed on the speedometer, that's really offensive to me.

Narrator: New model vehicles have an array of high-tech safety features that can help you avoid a crash, such as automatic emergency braking, blind spot detection, and electronic traction control.

Peter Norton: There's one tech that's off the table in this country, and that is the tech that would automatically keep cars' speeds down to a reasonable speed for conditions.

Narrator: Some manufacturers, including GM and Ford, provide an option for parents to preset speed limits for their teen drivers, and Volvo has set the top speed of its new models at 112 miles per hour, still ridiculously fast.

Some have called for speed limiters in all new cars and trucks.

But there's been little serious discussion about requiring them.

Peter Norton: Well, it's not on the table because the car makers today, just like the car makers of decades that passed, do not want speed made the culprit.

Speed is too attractive to consumers, too much of a selling point, and so it's off the table.

The irony, though, is that all of the other safety tech in cars works better at lower speeds so that the tech that would compel cars to slow down to safe speeds is also the tech that would make all the other safety tech on the car work better.

Narrator: Far more Americans have died in road crashes than in all the country's wars combined.

Considering the enormity of the trauma and death, the public response has been muted.

Danny: You cannot talk to one family in America who has not been touched by traffic violence, whether it was somebody in their family, whether they were in a traffic crash themselves, or whether they knew somebody who was killed or injured.

And this is an epidemic across America.

Michael Brooks: You know, in America, I think we've undervalued in many ways the safety of innocent lives on the road, you know, people who are speeding and carrying out their dreams of being macho or fast or whatever they're doing, impact the rest of us, and it's kind of a uniquely American selfishness, I think, that may be driving some of that.

Johnathon Ehsani: Crash deaths are kind of like a tap that's always dripping, and easy to ignore.

If you've got a faucet that's leaking, you just get used to the sound.

Unfortunately, crash deaths are the same way.

They happen in singles, sometimes doubles and triples and more, those are terribly catastrophic, but every single life that's taken on the road is one drop which then swells to, you know, 42,000 lives lost last year, roughly, right?

But if someone was to tell you, "Last year, 42,000 lives were lost on the roads," it's a staggering number.

But we don't think about it in those terms because a cyclist was killed.

A passenger was ejected for not wearing a seat belt.

One person was killed late at night because their car ran off the road.

In many cases, we never even hear about them.

Even our media doesn't report them unless there's something particularly horrific about the circumstances.

I will say some people are trying very hard to raise our awareness that the road system is dangerous, and that we need to remember it's dangerous by erecting these kind of makeshift memorials of people who have died.

Someone has stopped to put a cross, to lay some flowers, to sometimes put a picture of someone, for the benefit of everyone else to know that this particular stretch of road you're driving on, or this intersection, was a scene of the worst possible thing that could have happened.

If you'll humor me, I'll tell you one personal experience I had with this that made me really think about deaths on the road and how an entire system works to kind of erase any evidence of deaths on the road.

It was around November of 2018.

And that night I was invited to do a ride-along with the chief of the local emergency service in Maryland, in Bethesda.

And it so happened that night, very tragically, a young man who was riding a bicycle was struck as he crossed an eight-lane arterial road.

There was a long stretch of road where there was no crosswalk, so they would just kind of take their life into their own hand and try and cross mid-block.

He was hit at very high speed on his bicycle by a sports car.

And what was at the scene when we arrived was the smashed windshield of the vehicle, his bicycle, like, literally, dozens of meters away.

And a bag with his body in it.

And all over the road was blood.

Just horrific.

And the very last thing that happened before the road was reopened was that the fire engines came forward and they turned on their hoses and they washed away all of the blood.

It was like a wipe-down of a crime scene.

And all evidence that a death had occurred, a young life was taken, was completely erased in that moment.

And to me, it said something about the fact that we, kind of, we're blinded, by design, to the tragedies that are occurring every day on the roads, and how, understandably, blood needs to be washed away.

It's kind of a biohazard and it's all of those things.

But this is happening every single day, and there's a need for this to be more on our radar as a--as one of the leading causes of death in this country.

We have the level of deaths on the road that we have, because somehow we rationalize it as the cost of doing business.

Narrator: Many people who have been badly injured or lost loved ones have channeled their grief into activism, finding meaning in the hope of saving the life of someone else.

Damian Kevitt: February 17, 2013, I was cycling in Griffith Park with my wife.

We'd actually gone to Trader Joe's to get some food for a picnic at the LA Zoo.

A individual in a light colored minivan decided to cross over the double yellow and impacted me.

I rolled onto the hood of his car and then fell forward, and he took off, running over my right foot, crushing it and deboning parts of my right ankle.

And was pinned underneath the car.

I ended up being dragged as he took off, being dragged down the on-ramp of the 5 freeway.

I ended up breaking 20 bones, 10 ribs, my hips, wrists, both my shoulders.

I managed to pop myself free from underneath the car and was left in traffic lanes on the 5 freeway, nearly a quarter of a mile away from where I started, from where I was hit by this individual.

And he never stopped and was never caught.

Narrator: Kevitt lost his right leg and spent months in the hospital enduring 11 surgeries.

He learned that hit and run crashes were at epidemic levels in Los Angeles.

Damian: It's like, okay, how do I take what happened to me and turn it into something good?

How do I take the fact that I lost a leg, I nearly lost my life, how do I walk away from this, and know that I've saved at least one other person's life?

Narrator: A little more than a year after the crash, Kevitt led Finish the Ride, a biking event to raise awareness about the scourge of hit and run collisions.

He then founded an organization, Streets Are For Everyone, to campaign for safer streets for all road users.

The group organized a die-in at Los Angeles City Hall to protest crash deaths in the city rising well above 300 per year.

Damian: A majority of the people that are being hit injured in this city are because of speeding drivers.

People, slow down.

Tammy Guido McGee: Well, you know, there's no rulebook to look up, you know, on page 32, this is what you do when your child's killed.

Narrator: Conner Guido was 16 1 /2 when he was killed in a high-speed crash in Yorktown, Virginia.

He was a passenger in a BMW that was going at least 70 miles per hour in a 40 mile per hour zone when the car missed a curve and hit a tree, killing the driver along with Conner and another teenage friend.

Conner was a goalie for his high school soccer team and also ran hurdles in track.

Tammy Guido McGee: He loved to make everybody smile.

There's lots of pictures and videos that I have of him, just goofing off, doing pull-ups in the cafeteria at lunchtime, running onto the gym floor and doing cartwheels in the middle of class.

Conner was all about making everybody happy.

And quite honestly, I don't know anyone who had an ill word to say about Conner.

He was--he was very easy to love.

Narrator: It was homecoming weekend in October 2019.

After the Saturday night dance, Conner headed to a party.

Conner and a friend got a ride from another student.

Tammy: And the student was found later to be underage, unlicensed, and a bragging reckless driver on social media.

And there was a curve, less than a mile down the road, took the curve, lost control of the car, hit a tree, and flipped the car and killed all three of them instantly.

So in an instant he was gone.

The community really rallied together.

They did a candlelight vigil the next night.

I was--I was unable to attend that, clearly, was still grasping with the reality of, you know, you walk into your home and you walk into your son's bedroom and he's never gonna be there again.

So there is a lot of motion into what you're supposed to do.

Well, what people don't really talk about is the unknown, and the unknown is really just not knowing how to function.

So I got medicated and I'm trying to deal with the day-to-day of losing your son.

I was not going back to work, that was pretty clear, and I found myself sitting around, like, what was I gonna do?

And how much pain and suffering can you continue to wallow in every single day?

Narrator: In the meantime, she had learned things that shocked her.

Tammy: Because what we found out was the child was underage, unlicensed, he was bragging on social media, and nobody did anything.

Well, that Friday night in the parking lot, this teenager had been seen doing doughnuts.

People saw it and nobody did anything, and then the next night he killed my son.

I actually had a friend come up to me and say, "Wow, I saw him and I thought he's going to kill somebody."

But she never did anything.

Narrator: The driver was issued a parking pass at school without having to show he was a licensed driver, so Guido McGee teamed up with a state legislator to push through a new state law requiring Virginia schools to assure that students produce a valid license to get a permit to park on campus.

The law also required state driver's ed programs to improve instruction about the dangers of speeding and distracted driving.

Guido McGee founded the Conner Guido Memorial Foundation to educate teens and parents about driving safety.

She has barnstormed the state, telling her story to students at high schools and public events.

Tammy: And it's overwhelmingly received so well.

They run down when I'm through speaking and hug me.

I really felt like I haven't had COVID yet, but I might after this because so many kids were touching me and they're--they'd come up and say, "Can I give you a hug?

I promise I won't let this ever happen to anyone that I know.

I will drive safe," and so, you know, you don't get them all, but you know you get some of them, and some of them get someone else that gets someone else, and that's how the cycle starts, so.

I just tell our story and travel and speak to anyone that'll have us in hopes that we can eventually end and have zero deaths on our highways.

Narrator: Valentina D'Allesandro was 16, a high school student in Torrance, California, a Los Angeles suburb.

She dreamed of becoming a fashion designer and was looking forward to a trip to New York with her school's fashion club.

On December 7, 2013, she was going to a sleepover at a friend's house after a party.

Lili Trajillo Puckett: The boy that was a week shy of 18 was the one taking three girls home.

As he was taking them home, here's a coworker passing by.

They look at each other, they get side by side, and they challenge each other to a race.

He was going over 80 miles an hour.

He didn't think at 1 o'clock in the morning that anybody would really be around.

There was a lady coming back from work.

He tried to, you know, pass the yellow light.

Unfortunately, it did turn red.

He didn't have time to stop, crashed against an SUV and against the fence, and the only person that was killed was my daughter.

And I said to myself, if she didn't--he didn't race, my daughter would be alive.

So street races would kill my daughter, it was that decision that he took at that moment to race.

So within 5 months, one of her girlfriends asked me if I could speak at her school, and I spoke about street racing to over a thousand kids.

I honestly, I was smiling that day when I left for the first time.

And I said, "I just found a way of keeping her with me forever," and they're very bittersweet.

Next school asked me to speak.

I had a PowerPoint.

Next school asked me to speak, I had a logo and I had a name, and it just kept rolling.

Narrator: Street Racing Kills works to educate young people about the dangers of illegal street racing and reckless driving.

It runs a diversion program for drivers arrested for racing or involvement in street takeovers.

Lili: A lot of people are in-- unless they are affected by a crash, they don't know.

You know, if you're not--if you're not directly affected by it or you know, you mean, pass by those memorials.

Do you know the pain that is behind each memorial in the street?

If you haven't been affected, sometimes you don't think about it.

There's someone that lost someone.

There's not just a mother that lost.

There's a brother that lost a sister.

There's an uncle that lost a niece.

There's someone that lost someone, and at the end it's a heartbreak all over the place.

There's someone that's gonna go to jail and their family are gonna cry when that person goes to jail.

This other person just lost their loved one.

There's one difference: they can see their loved one again.

We have to wait until we get to be with our loved ones in heaven.

Narrator: Shortly before 3 p.m. on January 29, 2022, nine people perished in an instant in North Las Vegas when a Dodge Challenger ran a red light and blasted into an intersection, striking the Zacarias family minivan.

The speed limit there was 35 miles an hour.

The Challenger was traveling 103 miles per hour at the time of impact.

The 59-year-old driver had a record of speeding violations, and an autopsy found he was on drugs.

It happened on a Saturday.

That morning Erlinda went to work.

Jose Zacarias, her 35-year-old brother, drove Erlinda's four children and two stepkids to a park near their home.

The family loved Thai food, and they planned to meet Erlinda at 3 o'clock after she got off work at a Thai restaurant in a nearby shopping center.

Erlinda: So my daughter called me at 2:40 and say, "Mommy, are you almost finished?"

And I said, "Yes, I told you at 3 o'clock we see you on the shopping center--and they say, "Okay, Mommy, we're gonna get ready and go there."

Narrator: But her family didn't show up at 3 or even 3:30 or 4.

After several attempts to call them, she began driving toward the park.

She came upon emergency vehicles at the crash scene and saw bodies in the street.

It was a tragedy notable for the coincidence of place and time that put the family minivan in the path of an unguided missile.

Had the minivan reached the intersection a couple of seconds earlier or a couple of seconds later, the Challenger would have missed it.

Erlinda: Well, Fernando, he was the baby of the house.

This is Fernando.

He was 5 years old.

And he used to go on, you know, in kindergarten and they go to school and so.

He liked everything, you know, like a little one, so, and especially he was very spoiled from the brothers and everybody because he was the little one.

Narrator: When she was at work, her 13-year-old daughter Lluvia ran the house.

Erlinda: Well, Lluvia was the boss of the house.

Narrator: She was the boss?

Erlinda: Yes, she always, it was bossy to everybody 'cause she was the only--the only one home, and whatever she say, even if they want to go somewhere, she would say, "No, we want to go this place."

And they say, "Why only you pick the place?"

and she's the one wake up everybody to school.

She's the one--she was like a mom there.

Narrator: Erlinda was haunted by the silence, by the emptiness of her home, by the bedrooms full of her kids' clothing.

She had to move.

Erlinda: It is very hard because since that happened, I'm feeling like, how can that happen?

Why?

And it's hard to think that they're gone, and for me, it's very hard because I don't see my life with them, you know, like I was, they was with me and so now that they're gone it's like, keep on, but I have to because I know they're gone and and I feel like I lost everything, you know.

Tiffani Rosetta May Noel: My name is Tiffani Rosetta May Noel.

Narrator: Tiffani May Noel was behind the wheel in the next lane over when the Challenger plowed into the Zacarias' minivan and pushed it into her Ford Fusion.

She survived the crash but has struggled to recover from painful injuries to her legs, hips, and spine.

On the day of the crash, Tiffani saw a pair of side tables advertised for sale on social media.

She thought, "Perfect for my office," and was on her way to buy them when things took a catastrophic turn.

Tiffani: It has been the worst thing I've ever had to go through, the transition from being an able-bodied person to being, in essence, I'm considered to be a disabled person now, it's really opened my eyes to what people live through every day and also just what a trauma can do.

It's been a very intense emotional and mental battle for me.

There's not a day that I don't think about the nine people who passed away.

There's not a day that I don't cry about them or pray about-- pray for them.

And it just--time doesn't heal all.

I worry about the rising death toll, and how that behavior is influenced.

Media people and marketing people understand the psyche of people, that's how they get them to buy products.

You know, I think it's like almost a no-brainer, of course it's influential, that's the purpose of it.

It's supposed to influence you to do something.

You want the--you want to buy a fast car because it's fast, you know.

You--that's the purpose of buying it.

So, of course, you're gonna drive fast.

I think that those subtle little messages on the bottom of the screen that says, "Don't try this at home," are really hard to read.

You don't know that and it doesn't even register to you, you're just really taking in all of the other bad information to speed and make poor decisions on the road.

It hurts my feelings to see it, especially having this personal experience, and no one should have to have their life changed by going to go get groceries or walking somewhere and these advertising--advertisements kind of desensitize us from that.

Narrator: In 2004, safety groups persuaded General Motors to pull an ad featuring a dream sequence in which a boy in a Corvette is going so fast that the car goes airborne.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, funded by the insurance industry and one of the groups protesting the ad, had complained about other commercials as well.

In 2002, the head of the Insurance Institute wrote to the president of American Honda Motor Company about what he described as an especially egregious ad for the Acura RSX: "Fast and aggressive driving, especially by young male drivers, is a significant contributor to serious motor vehicle crashes in the United States.

Given this, it's disturbing when vehicle manufacturers produce television commercials that blatantly promote these kinds of unsafe driving behaviors.

The airing of this commercial, which explicitly promotes dangerous driving behavior, is a clear case of corporate irresponsibility."

It's unclear how Honda responded, but based on recent Acura commercials, it appears the complaint had no lasting effect.

Acura also has enlisted young women as paid influencers to showcase the stunts its cars can do.

♪ You got this.

♪♪♪ Narrator: And the company created an anime series called "Chiaki's Journey" about a young woman learning to race an Acura Type S car.

But in worshiping speed, menace, and intimidation, Dodge is in a class by itself.

For many years, a brand of the Chrysler Corporation, Dodge is now part of Stellantis, a global automaker based in Amsterdam with numerous other brands including Jeep, Chrysler, Fiat, and Alfa Romeo.

There's nothing subtle about the marketing of Dodge muscle cars.

One campaign celebrates the Never Lift philosophy of keeping a foot planted firmly on the gas pedal.

[tires screeching] Male voiceover: Think again.

[engines revving] Voiceover: Where worship isn't offered to the sun, but to the smoking tire.

The S curve, spin turn, where the lines being blurred are the ones between drivers-- and demons.

David Zuby: I'm David Zuby, and I am the executive vice president and chief research officer for IHS and HLDI.

Narrator: The Insurance Institute did an analysis of death rates for car and truck models, both for their drivers and for other drivers on the road.

The analysis found the muscle cars on this list highlight that a vehicle's image and how it is marketed can also contribute to crash risk.

Three Dodge muscle cars with excessively high driver death rates also rank among the worst performers when it comes to other driver deaths, suggesting these vehicles are driven in an aggressive manner.

David: So, I think we're kind of hypothesizing here that the image that the vehicles have and the way they're advertising may influence the way they're driven.

This question about the extent to which advertising contributes to the way vehicles are driven is kind of a chicken and egg question.

Does Dodge advertise its products in that way because that is what they think their customers want, or do their customers see those ads and then take that as a cue to how to drive, you know, products from the Dodge brand?

And we don't have solid evidence that these depictions of aggressive driving without consequences leads to more people driving aggressively.

But it certainly doesn't help because, you know, the physics of the matter is that driving aggressively is more risky, both risky of having a crash and risky of being hurt in a crash, and when you don't see this, maybe you start to get the idea that you can do it yourself without consequence.

Narrator: Dodge recently unveiled a 1025 horsepower model called the Challenger SRT Demon 170 that can go from 0 to 60 in 1.66 seconds.

male: This is the fastest, loudest, most Dodge Dodge in the history of Dodge.

Narrator: Jay Leno is a fan.

He featured the car on Jay Leno's Garage, his YouTube automotive show.

Jay Leno: You know, there is no substitution for immaturity.

I'm jus gonna--my foot and see what this thing does.

Here we go.

Wow, there you go.

Get rubber in all eight gears.

Oh my God.

Narrator: Note, by law, drivers must use a shoulder and lap belt.

You might think, why single out car commercials when driving sequences in movies, videos, and video games tend to be more extreme, but automakers have a hand in these too through licensing deals that enable them to cross promote their models.

In 2012 through 2016, Lexus sponsored a TV show called "Shut Up and Drive" in which professional drivers raced Lexus IS 350s through hairpin turns along scenic narrow roads.

Male voiceover: "Shut Up and Drive" has tapped into the feeling that every driver dreams about, the rush of driving the most amazing roads in the world as fast as you possibly can, without having to worry about cops, traffic, or anyone else on the road at all.

Narrator: GMC partnered with the popular "Call of Duty" game franchise to promote its Hummer electric pickup by allowing players to drive a digital replica of the giant truck.

Dodge has featured its cars in the "Need for Speed" game series and partnered with the popular "PUBG" mobile video game to bring the famed Dodge muscle cars to life in digital form and ready to do battle.

Dodge's biggest cross promotion has involved the "Fast and Furious" films that have racked up more than $7 billion in global sales since the release of the first of the ten films in 2001.

Reality intruded on "Fast and Furious" in a big way.

In a tragic irony, actor Paul Walker, one of the stars, died in a high-speed crash in 2013 north of Los Angeles.

He was a passenger in a Porsche Carrera that left the road and slammed into a pole, killing Walker and the driver.

"Fast and Furious" has drawn an army of devoted fans, including many wannabes.

The main character, Dom Toretto, played by Vin Diesel, is from the Los Angeles neighborhood of Angelino Heights.

It became a kind of pilgrimage site for "Furious" fans, resulting in residents being tormented by roaring engines and squealing tires at all hours of the night.

In an attempt to test the influence on driver behavior, Deanna Singhal used speed camera data to compare speeding violations in the Canadian city of Edmonton before and after two "Fast and Furious" movies opened in local theaters.

Deanna: And so what we noticed for "Furious 7" was a significant increase in the number of these speeding infractions, particularly on the first few following days after that release.

Not only that, but we also noticed that the speed that individuals were being caught at was significantly higher than what we would usually see on a weekend in the city.

Though the numbers were higher for the sixth installment, they didn't quite reach that level of statistical significance, but they were trending in the same direction.

Narrator: In recent decades, vehicles have been getting taller and heavier.

Automakers have heavily promoted SUVs and pickups, which are more polluting and less fuel efficient, but more profitable than sedans.

Motorists have taken the bait, and SUVs and pickups now dominate new vehicle sales.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sets minimum safety standards for cars and trucks but has no authority over the mix of vehicles offered on the market.

Some people need a big vehicle to haul work materials or a large family.

Others are afraid not to have one.

Like people who buy guns because they feel surrounded in a society bristling with weapons, some buy an SUV because it's intimidating to be dwarfed by bigger and taller vehicles.

Michael: This is something I talk about with friends of mine, when they're buying their children their first cars, and they're saying, you know, "I want my kid to have a big enough vehicle so that when they're inevitably in their first crash, they're going to be protected."

When it comes down to it, weight matters, you know.

We're introducing large amounts of weight onto the roads, then there's going to be a corresponding increase in fatalities and injuries.

It's one of the, you know, kind of one of the fundamental rules of traffic safety.

Michael Schneider: It's absolutely an arms race.

It's a total arms race, but I also think it's so sad that we're all just gonna be in these larger and larger vehicles that are worse and worse for the planet and for vulnerable road users and our pocketbook.

Narrator: Many commercials seek to deflect concerns about the environmental footprint of SUVs and pickups by showing drivers escaping the noise and grind of the city to beautiful natural areas.

Yet the vehicles are often shown conquering nature by tearing through the desert or plowing through streams which can cause erosion and degrade habitat.

Carter Rubin: And once you've kind of committed to a pathway of wanting to sell larger, heavier vehicles to increase profit margins, you have to come up with a marketing campaign that takes advantage of some of the theoretical benefits of that kind of vehicle, because generally driving a big SUV in an urban environment or suburban environment presents a lot of hassles.

It's harder to find a parking space.

It is harder to maneuver, you know, in traffic congestion, but you could try to sell it to someone as helping them cross through a river stream, even if that's a profoundly antisocial-type behavior.

I wouldn't want to be a turtle in a stream when an SUV is crashing through it.

Dan Becker: Companies try to associate their products with something that everybody loves.

One of the things that has always appalled me is that so often the auto companies choose the names of beautiful places and name their gas-guzzling behemoths after the Denali Range or the Acadia National Park, or the tundra.

Narrator: The auto industry is doing something that is very good for the environment: ramping up production of electric vehicles, a crucial step in achieving healthier air and cutting carbon emissions that warm the planet.

But because electrification will greatly increase the weight of already big and heavy vehicles, the public safety implications are sobering.

Jennifer Homendy: And I want to take a second and mention that I am concerned about the increased risk of severe injury and death for all road users, from heavier curb weights and increasing size, power, and performance of vehicles on our roads, including electric vehicles.

A GMC Hummer EV weighs over 9000 pounds, up from 6000 pounds.

The battery pack alone--the battery pack alone weighs over 2900 pounds, actually 2923 pounds, which is just 10 pounds shy of an entire Honda Civic.

The Ford F-150 Lightning is between 2000 and 3000 pounds heavier than the non-electric version.

That has a significant impact on safety for all road users.

Johnathon: So anyone who's driven a internal combustion engine car and an electric vehicle will remark on how much quicker an EV is because the way the energy is transferred to the drivetrain makes it a far faster kind of transfer of energy.

If an electric vehicle hits a pedestrian, it's a heavier vehicle and potentially moving faster, then the human body only has a certain threshold of forces that it can tolerate before it breaks.

Narrator: But in marketing their EVs, some automakers seem worried that consumers might think these greener models are weak little golf carts.

So commercials emphasize that the EVs will be even faster and more powerful than the gasoline-powered versions.

Take this Kia ad for an electric SUV, boasting that it will out-accelerate a Porsche, and these commercials for Acura and Nissan EVs.

♪♪♪ female: Game on.

female: And all-wheel-drive.

female: Ooh.

female: It's a beast.

Narrator: President Biden's praise for the Hummer EV raised some eyebrows.

Joe Biden: God, it's good to be back in Detroit.

And that Hummer's one hell of a vehicle, man.

Narrator: As has GMC's promotion of a Hummer feature called Watts to Freedom, which amusingly abbreviates to WTF.

Michael Brooks: Now, the advertising for this thing says, "Oh, you should only do this on a closed course," and a lot of these advertisers that we're talking about today have the same thing.

We could only do this on a closed course.

How many people go to closed courses to try this out?

Very, very few, and so, functionally, you know, GMC is putting a warp speed button in a massive SUV, and it can be activated anywhere.

It can be activated right downtown outside of a concert hall or right downtown after a big football game, you know, when there are pedestrians everywhere, and people are not trained for this, particularly these larger vehicles.

It's disappointing that something that silly actually works and sells cars to people.

It's kind of just--you're kind of disappointed in your fellow man when you see just--them fall for total gimmicks like that.

Dan: And electric vehicles have an enormous advantage over gasoline-powered vehicles in that they don't spew pollution that causes smog and global warming.

But we have to be responsible and careful with the way we make electric vehicles to make sure that they don't waste resources, some of the metals that go into the battery, for example, like lithium and cobalt, better to use less than more, and better to be responsible in mining them and in treating the workers who extract them.

And it's important to recognize that the truckification of the fleet, the effort by the auto companies to stop making cars and make everything a truck because they can make them more profitable that way, is infecting the electric vehicle, at this very nascent stage.

And most of the new electric vehicles are not cars.

They are pickups and SUVs.

That will mean that they will need larger batteries.

The batteries will need more materials, and they'll need more electric--more electricity to charge them up.

So it's a stupid direction to take.

It'd be much wiser to make right-sized vehicles.

Narrator: When Dodge announced it would launch electric versions of its gas-powered muscle cars, "Motor Trend" magazine reported that Dodge's then CEO Tim Kuniskis received death threats.

Tim Kuniskis: Dodge will not sell electric cars.

Dodge will sell American muscle.

So if a charger can make a Charger quicker, we're in.

Better, faster Dodges to tear up the streets, not the planet.

Voiceover: Surely you jest.

Why on God's green earth would Dodge ever build an electric car?

♪ Money makes the world go round.

♪ ♪ It makes the world go round.

♪ ♪ Money makes the world go round.

♪ ♪ It makes the world go round.

♪ ♪ Money makes the world go round.

♪ ♪ It makes the world go round.

♪ ♪ Money makes the world go round.

♪ ♪ It makes the world go round.

♪ ♪ Break out the money, the money means cash.

♪ ♪ Bring out the bills, bringing out the stash.

♪ Narrator: In the US, more than 40,000 people are being killed in road crashes annually, with tens of thousands more suffering catastrophic injuries.

In a parallel universe far from this reality, popular media, including many car commercials, glamorize speed and reckless driving, but with none of the tragic consequences.

Out of respect for crash victims and to promote the safety of the rest of us, shouldn't automakers set a better example?

Is it too much to ask that they model the safe and responsible use of their cars and trucks?

Tiffani: My message to them would be you're hurting us, you know, you're hurting the very consumers that you are marketing to.

We realize that we're all someone's loved ones and our behaviors should be responsible so that we can make it home to the people who depend on us.

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