Illinois DOT Launches Innovative ‘Driving Dead’ Traffic Safety Campaign

The Illinois Department of Transportation has tackled an ambitious campaign to eliminate traffic fatalities and it doesn’t look like any other highway safety campaign I’ve ever seen.

The new Driving Dead Series will feature Michael Rooker from the TV series Walking Dead and “involves a cast of central characters living in a Zombie-filled, post-apocalyptic world,” according to an Illinois DOT new release.

The novel approach to build an online campaign focused on a specific audience of younger adults who, according to research, are more likely to get behind the wheel after drinking or drugging.

“Far too many people still mix alcohol, drugs and driving. Young people, in particular, often don’t understand that impaired driving is a crime, and a serious one — and they also are less likely to buckle up,” said Acting Transportation Secretary Erica Borggren. “These same young people ages 21-34 no longer receive news through traditional means. We’re hopeful this new series will catch their attention and give them a reason to log on or check their mobile devices. When they do, they’ll be entertained — and most importantly, they’ll receive a life-saving message.”

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New Technology and Information Overload: A Few Questions from Neil Postman

Neil Postman, media and cultural critic.

Earlier today I was working on preparing materials for some training sessions and I was reminded of something said by Neil Postman, a very important media critic and social theorist who never lived long enough to see the full development of “cyberspace,” the term used to describe our online world in the 1990s.

Postman, during a 1995 interview on the PBS NewsHour, was asked, “What images come to your mind when you, when you think about what our lives will be like in cyberspace?”

Postman answered,”Well, the, the worst images are of people who are overloaded with information which they don’t know what to do with, have no sense of what is relevant and what is irrelevant, people who become information junkies.”