Our 'Feet On The Dash' Message - 'again'

Last July I photographed a couple of images and produced a montage which I put out on social media to hopefully alert people worldwide to an all too common sight on our roads.

Every holiday season in my chauffeur business I witness so many front seat passengers in cars travelling with their feet on the dash so I created the image below to hopefully alert them to the extreme dangers of this.

One summer in my capacity as a fire service photographer and videographer I attended a minor road traffic collision involving a car containing a mother who was driving her daughter who sadly had her feet on the dash. Even at the low speed the airbags deployed and caused 'very' serious injuries to the young girl who was using her phone at the time, much like in the image below. Imagine your knees and lower legs impacting your face at the 200mph, the speed at which an airbag inflates!?

Needless to say I got so much response to that image that it went viral worldwide and was seen by hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, some of whom contacted me personally to thank me for the montage and even one female survivor who this had happened to! An alarming number hadn't even considered the dangers before and if you are still not convinced, watch this short video - https://youtu.be/8YB6sPVJHj0

Since then quite a few people and even professional media organisations have stolen and doctored my image by cropping it's main part and even in some cases flipped it so that it appears to be a left hand drive vehicle.

Now while I of course don't mind the good intentions of folk to spread the word and highlight this very real danger I would like to put the record straight here and now as to where it originated from. Some idiotic people and maybe even Trolls have sadly skewed the agenda by making ridiculous comments about the drivers apparent age, that it must be "Daddy's Mercedes" and "why are they not wearing seat belts" amongst others. The passenger is my partners 16 year old daughter and the 'driver' is her 17 year old boyfriend. The car, my car, was stationary with the engine switched off when I took the image to which I added motion blur to later in Adobe Photoshop to give the impression the vehicle was moving. As to the no seatbelt bit, that was intentional as an additional and subliminal safety message which I have to say did get people talking and sharing. So, job done I think.

I'm very happy for anyone to use the image above 'in it's entirety' because after all if just one person who does this sees it and stops doing it well that has to be what it is all about.

If you would like me to send you the original image for your own use please email me at admin@drivearrive.co.uk and I will happily send it to you

Thank you.