Jarring SAAQ campaign aims to surprise pedestrians
It’s playful at first: Your body is reflected back at you as a skeleton on a screen set up inside a bus shelter.
Then comes the screeching tires as your skeleton is hurled into the air by a speeding car.
The jarring video, using immersive technology at the corner of René-Lévesque and St-Laurent Blvds. on Friday, was meant to surprise pedestrians as part of an annual awareness campaign by the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec. Spokesperson Mario Vaillancourt explained that the licence bureau usually rolls out a publicity campaign during October for pedestrian-awareness month. The agency has bought television and radio ads, and intends to produce a video based on Friday’s experiment that will be posted on social-media channels.
Many who took part in the video smiled, or screamed when they heard the loud noise of the car colliding with their skeletons. Vaillancourt said the point of the stunt is to make an impression that people will remember the next time they cross the street.
“We want to show pedestrians how vulnerable they are (against cars),” Vaillancourt said. “We are warning pedestrians to be careful, and to make sure they have seen cars well. But we’re also appealing to cars, because it’s a shared responsibility.”
Vaillancourt said the statistics in Quebec have been going the wrong way in the last few years. In 2017, there was an increase in pedestrian deaths from 62 to 69. For the first half of this year, there were 40 deaths, up from 36 the previous year. He added that 40 per cent of all pedestrian deaths occurred in Montreal.
Olivier Labonté LeMoyne is the director of the project for the production company BLVD. The Montreal-based company came up with the immersive technology and will be producing the video that will be posted online. “It’s an algorithm that depends on the position where the skeleton is, so there’s nothing pre-programmed about it.”