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Network Rail in the UK has many rather scary safety videos.
Here's one that's relevant to the SF bay area.[1] It's about the dangers of aluminum Mylar helium balloons near overhead wire. Those balloons are conductors, and so are their shiny metallized ribbons. If one of those things gets close to high voltage overhead wire, the holder will be electrocuted. In wet weather, ordinary non-metallic strings become conductive. Network Rail has deaths this way regularly.
The SF bay area now needs that warning. CALTRAIN electrification is close to power-up. That's expected in Q4 2023.[2] This is the first time the SF Bay Area has had 25KV overhead wire close to ground level. (SF Muni is 600VDC. BART is 1000VDC. Most power transmission lines at higher voltages are much higher up than railroad power. Caltrain wire is at roughly 5 meters.)
Balloons on long strings are now deadly near the tracks. Tell people this.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udaS3NDCkk0
[2] https://www.caltrain.com/projects/electrification/constructi...
Are the rail safety videos popping up recently in response to teens videoing themselves on rails for likes?
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/teens-electrocuted-600...
> Network Rail has deaths this way regularly.
No they don’t? But they do make the trains late.
My favorite rail poster of all time was an Indian dual-use one from the early 80s. It had a picture of mum, dad, daughter, and son walking across the platform together each carrying a single suitcase.
Along the top it said "Travel Light: Plan your Trip."
Across the bottom it said "Plan your Family".
I so wanted to take a photo but no cameras were allowed in the train station.
Why were no cameras allowed in the train station?
The 'Dumb Ways to Die' video from a few years ago, from Australia, was quite funny and memorable (which I think is the aim for these campaigns):
Be safe around trains.
Iceland has some PSAs running right now about e-scooter safety that have a similar vibe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSUNZ3quITA&list=PL3prAqz9YE...
It's easy to laugh at the Thai posters for how obvious the precautions seem. But this is a good reminder that there are new technologies today for which we don't yet know the "obvious" precautions.
Damn, Happy Tree Friends vibes...
Doesn't compare to Roald Dahl's guide to train safety: https://tygertale.com/2014/06/25/final-warning-roald-dahls-g...
The Quenin Blake illustrations of decapitation really hit the point home.
That's a classic of course, but for me, these exaggerated cartoon/comic style depictions are not as disturbing as the more realistic Thai posters, because they make you think of other classics (Road Runner & Coyote, Tom & Jerry etc.) where the protagonists regularly suffer gruesome mutilations, only to be perfectly fine again in the next scene...
I was just thinking about this. Thanks for digging it out
To be fair BPI were pretty good at scaring the absolute shit out of the general British public in the seventies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0xmSV6aq0g&t=2s
Especially terrifying, in modern light, to watch Jimmy Saville narrate child safety videos.
For sheer shock value, little can beat the texting-while-driving one. No direct link but you can google "british texting while driving ad". The NZ safe driving ads are also really something. "new zealand safe driving shock ads" brings up one that really triggers, but then again, both the above particularly work if you're a parent.
This terrified me for decades after seeing on tea-time TV: http://www.weirdretro.org.uk/the-finishing-line-the-banned-p...
In France, during the late 90ies/early 00ies, we got a bunch of "quite direct" Road Safety ads.
The one that traumatized me the most as a child was:
While UK struggled to make people understand that using the Ticket Machine was a piece of cake!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/19704146340/in/date...
For forklifts, see: Staplerfahrer Klaus
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psAWGv5O7Zs>
(If you have not seen it, I implore you to watch the entire thing.)
I like how the last few seem like a sabotage manual in disguise. ̶D̶o̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ throw stones at the trains. ̶D̶o̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ destroy communication equipment. ̶D̶o̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ bring animals to tend on the tracks. Makes sense since these were from 1965–1968: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Thailan...
Does telling someone who might lie on the tracks to not lie on the tracks have much of an effect?
Are there people who lie on train tracks who are unaware that doing so is dangerous?
I feel this misunderstands the posters way of working in the same way that a lot of people misunderstand how ads operate: Just because you don't suddenly get an irresistible urge to drink a gallon of Coca Cola after seeing an ad for it does not mean it wasn't effective-- you are not looking to cause monumental shifts in your targets worldview or values, instead you slowly nudge all their future decisionmaking in a favorable direction... slightly.
When you’re tired, it’s comforting to lay on a track rather than hard ground. The wood provides a stable level surface, and tracks are cleaned regularly. You can doze off for a nap if you know trains don’t regularly come by.
While driving in a remote area of India late one night, I came across an entire family (from the Dalit caste) sleeping in the middle of the road. Either they had no home, or they were travelling. The location was warm (the asphalt held daytime heat) and clean (the road being bordered by dense jungle). Given the context, it made sense.
Love the contrast with the previous article on the same site: https://www.thaitrainguide.com/2022/06/05/day-trip-to-the-ma...
Clearly these 1960s posters were not very effective.
Just in general, while it's not easy to notice in these specific posters, Thai art is absolutely incredible. It's strikingly and fundamentally different from the art in the West. If you ever have the chance to visit Thailand, visit their contemporary art galleries.
Can you recommend some galleries in Bangkok? I'm visiting in November. I already have MOCA on my list, is that enough or should I plan more?
Reminds me of this old favorite, Chraňte Děti. http://cardhouse.com/a/distress/distress.htm
The one with the bridge reminds me of the trestle scene in "Stand by Me".
Anybody who's ever been a youth counselor anywhere in the world can sympathize.
"Don't play Frogger with real cars."
"Don't shoot Roman Candles at each other."
"Don't drink laundry detergent."
This was a big improvement over the usual walls of text we were seeing back in 2020:
https://www.who.int/images/default-source/wpro/countries/mal...
Reminds me of my favorite high-voltage warning label:
> DANGER: NOT ONLY WILL THIS KILL YOU, IT WILL HURT THE WHOLE TIME YOU'RE DYING
The “Don’t stand on the steps” poster sure looks like the other passenger threw him from the train. But resisting throwing out other passengers is also good advice.
The Thai anti-smoking ads are pretty straightforward/gruesome as well, and cigarette companies are required to include them on their packaging.
There's one about giving your dog lung cancer which is pretty hard to forget
Just a benign observation: The list starts with brutal and graphic, going progressively benign to harmless ones. Shock effect expected.
This is hilarious because Thai trains are anything BUT fast.
I remember a Thai train slowing to a near standstill, followed by an excessive tilt to the side for a couple car lengths of movement, then back up to speed.
Also remember lines of Thai people being stopped by a guard with a machine gun for searches while my pale colored wife and I were waved right through into the train station.
I would like to go back to Thailand it was a fantastic vacation.
All the more likely to underestimate the danger.
We are not good at estimating the speed of large objects because so much of our perception of the speed of objects happens in "units of relative length over time". When a small dog walks beside a horse the dog will appear much faster.
(2022)
We need a poster for here in Oregon to inform the public that they should shouldn’t shamble into the road without looking, and should cross with due haste.
You’d think this was something to learn as a two year old, but I guess not.
Why? Humans were here first, the cars should adapt to the existing presence of humans. "Jay walking" is a way for car makers to pretend that the problem they're causing is someone else's fault.
I wonder how many ways these could get attacked in modern litigation culture. I can think of two.
1. The graphical injuries shown are an admission by the railway company that such injuries can happen, increasing its liability when something does.
2. The graphical nature of the posters could "trigger" traumatic experiences in someone...
Generally modern litigation assume you follow the following steps: design the problem out, guard it out, then warn it out. Those are ordered steps, so if you can fix the problem with a different design you can't put guards on and call it good, but if there is danger remaining after looking at the design and adding guards then a warning sign is a way out of liability. Many of the dangers listed cannot be solved with a design or guards, so signs noting the danger are the correct response and will be used in court to show they knew of the danger and tried their best to prevent it in the only way left.
Note that these are from the mid 1960s - there is technology today to design out some of those hazards that didn't exist then. Platform screen doors for example didn't exist back then, but because they do now you can no longer warn about someone getting to close to the platform edge, you need to design it out by adding those doors (such doors do not work on curved platforms so signs are still useful for some really old stations that are impossible to remodel). For all the others you have a good case against the railroad if you get hit by a train since they should have doors, fences, and quad arm crossing guards which by design make it nearly impossible to get on the track and thus there is no danger of getting hit.
Are you literally making up a guy to get mad at here? There are still intense and even gruesome safety PSAs all over the world.
This is the reason Americans are losing their edge. There is heavy risk aversion. It is a cultural dead-end. Risk needs to be counterbalanced by securities, but risk cannot altogether be avoided.
Avoiding risk has a very heavy intended punishment.
The other side of the same coin is also not good, to take too much risk. But all in all, current American culture looks insane from a distance. Especially concerning how kids are reared. Recipe for drug addiction and depressions.