Every year, texting while driving is a factor in more than 100,000 car crashes. The four major providers in the U.S, AT&T, Spring, Verizon, and T-Mobile recently teamed up to launch the It Can Wait campaign – an initiative with a simple message: No text, email, or Facebook update is worth endangering the lives of everyone on the road.
Now, the campaign has enlisted master filmmaker Werner Herzog to help get its message across.
Herzog, known best for his powerful documentaries Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World, and Lessons of Darkness, as well as the films Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God, has directed a 30-minute short film that follows the stories of those affected by texting and driving.
It’s called “From One Second to The Next,” and you can watch it in its entirety below:
“When you get a message while driving, it’s hard not to pick up your phone,” said Herzog. “With this film, we want to help make people more aware of the potential consequences of that action.”
Recent studies have shown that texting while driving Is prevalent, it makes you more likely to do other stupid things behind the wheel, and that it kills more kids than drunk driving. It’s a topic that many feel needs a brighter light shone on it, and there’s nothing like a powerful film from a legendary filmmaker to help achieve that goal.
The film, apart from being free to view online, will also be distributed to more than 40,000 high schools in the U.S.