Nationwide Insurance Company has gotten a lot of people upset by airing a Super Bowl ad last night which dramatically addressed the death of a child. Nationwide insurance posted the ad to its YouTube account, and the ad can be viewed here. The ad has a link to MakeSafeHappen.com, a website which gives helpful advice to parents on safety rules which will help them keep their children safe.
Many of the comments posted by YouTube viewers were very critical of the company. Some said things like:
“Poor taste. Remove this garbage. Your company cannot prevent accidents because accidents HAPPEN.”
“You cannot prevent an accident.”
But those comments miss the point of the ad. The text that appears on screen makes it very clear that the company is talking about accidents that can be prevented. The ad says:
The #1 cause of childhood deaths is preventable accidents.
On YouTube, the description Nationwide placed below the video window says:
The #1 cause of childhood deaths is preventable accidents. At Nationwide, we believe in protecting what matters most, your kids. Together we can #MakeSafeHappen. Learn more at http://makesafehappen.com.
While there sometimes are plain old “accidents,” most injuries would never have happened if people had been more cautious in the first place. The vast majority of injuries and deaths happen because someone ignores a safety rule, and by the time the danger is seen, it’s too late. For example, a driver falling asleep at the wheel crashes into another car. That’s clearly an accident – he didn’t mean to crash, and didn’t intend to hurt anyone. But the tired driver never should’ve gotten behind the wheel in the first place, so this was preventable.
A speeding driver is unable to avoid a crash because there isn’t enough time to stop once the pedestrian walks into the roadway. But the speeding driver would have had enough time to stop if they had been obeying the speed limit in the first place.
The truck driver crashes into the rear of the small car in front of him because there isn’t enough room to stop safely. But that trucker could’ve avoided the crash if he’d left more room in front of him and was following at a safe distance, especially because trucks need a lot more space to stop than a car driver does.
Most injuries are preventable. For that reason, we applaud MakeSafeHappen.com. The website gives useful information on how parents can protect their children from accidents and injuries around the home. We urge all parents to go to that website to actively learn how to help make their children safe at home.