Every year thousands of young people die behind the wheel due to texting. How do you convince youngsters not to text while driving? Oblige them to text while driving! We told them they would have to pass the mobile phone test behind the wheel before obtaining their driver’s license.

Everything was filmed and sent to politicians, journalists and other influencers with one question: wouldn’t it be a good idea to implement this texting & driving test in a real law? And the video was used by Responsible Young Drivers as an impactful illustration during a series of presentations in schools.

We set up a fake driving test that pushed people to text while driving. The test was filmed with candid camera. This video was the basis for a series of presentations in schools and driving schools across the country. Next to this it was put on YouTube to spread more rapidly, and sent to politicians, journalists and other influencers asking if it wouldn’t be a good idea to implement the texting & driving test by a real law.

When RYD shows the video to kids in schools, it proved to be very effective. It speaks the language of our audience. There are no crashes in the video. No blood. Instead we let people realize the danger by themselves, and to experience it themselves. RYD receives phone calls and e-mails from schools and driving schools from across Europe, countries in Africa, Canada, Australia, and China. All asking for copies of the educational video. Some driving schools are considering to integrate the mobile phone test in the driving course.

Since the campaign has only kicked-off the 28th of April it’s hard to deliver car-crash statistics at this moment. But after two weeks, the YouTube video had been watched 1.3 million times. This doesn’t include the views on hundreds of blogs who reposted the video themselves. We were picked up by national TV (Belgium) and international TV (France, Canada, UK, US…). Several news sites (BBC, TF1, RTL, Daily Mail…) and major blogs (Mashable, Buzzfeed, Break.com…) reported about us. Just google “the impossible texting & driving test” to get an idea of the huge coverage. The first week we we’re ranked 3rd in the FR viral video chart of most shared videos. With 8.605 shares we’re now still ranked 12th in the last 30 days.