Billboard From "Funeral Home" Brilliantly Goes After People Who Text And Drive

This billboard from the "Wathan Funeral Home" in
Toronto is causing a stir.  

I guess the Wathan Funeral Home in the Toronto area needs to drum up business.

They have a giant billboard on a major highway there that says "Text And Drive."

Texting and driving is one of the best ways to get you, or somebody else killed, so there's that.

Actually, the Wathan Funeral Home doesn't really exist. The "Text and Drive" billboard is a clever, if dark PSA  to tell all those idiots out there to stop friggin texting and driving, dammit!

It's one of my pet peeves. Maybe my biggest. All the time, on the road, their heads are down, they're swerving all over the road, or not stopping at red lights, or not going at green lights, because of the all important texts they have to send.

In my darkest moments, I think people who text and drive deserve to die, as long as they don't hurt anybody else.

After all, if you text and drive, that means you don't give a crap about anybody else. "Who cares if somebody dies. This text to my girlfriend is more important than your life,"  seems to be the thought process of those who text and drive.

Maybe if texters and drivers were brought up on murder or attempted murder charges when they cause a crash, that would teach them a lesson.

Anyway, my hostile view of texters and drivers is the same one that inspired the "Text and Drive" billboard from the fictitious Wathan Funeral Home.

The funeral home, as noted, doesn't exist, but it does have a website. 

If you go to it, you get this message:

"If you're here, you've probably seen our "Text and Drive" billboard. And if you have, you probably came to this website to tell us what horrible people we are for running an ad like that. And you'd be right.

It's a horrible thing for a funeral home to do. But we're not a funeral home.

We're just trying to get Canadians to stop texting and driving, which is projected to kill more people in Ontario this year than drinking and driving. That's right. More. And while most people wouldn't even think about drinking and driving, over half of Ontario's drivers admit to reading texts behind the wheel.

That's more than half of the drivers on the road today risking their lives, their passengers' lives and the lives of fellow motorists and pedestrians.

Which should make you even madder than our billboard did."

It sure does!

The PSA is from the Montreal ad agency St. John St., in partnership with Cieslok Media, says AdWeek.