While I was a student at my local driving school, we would watch several videos on safety but one had stuck out to me because of its emotional and graphic appeal. The UK published a public service announcement to prevent texting while driving. This video is so shocking, realistic and frightening that it certainly does its job to deter teens and people in general from the dangerous act.
Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0LCmStIw9E
This disturbing ad is asking you, is whatever you are texting to someone so urgent that it is worth the lives of those you love, and worth the lives of innocent others. In chapter four, the topic of relevancy was important. A good rhetor needs to write or argue about things that have importance in our society, a topic that there is an audience for, ready to hear. Texting and driving is a current topic, one that is reoccurring and getting worse as technology grows. This PSA plays well into that discussion on prevention of texting and driving and it uses pathos to do so with its graphic images of girls necks being snapped, dead babies, and a child who is now orphaned from this horrific accident.
The UK does a good job at showing you what could happen, and asking, is it worth it? Or will you fulfill your civic duty to your society and not endanger the lives of others. The civic-ness is obvious in this particular PSA because usually drinking and driving is focused mainly on the driver hurting themselves, but this ad is showing that you are hurting your community more than yourself; And being truly civic is a reminder that you are responsible for your community as well.