One at a time, youngsters showed up to what they thought was their first driving lesson – a usual introduction in a traffic-cone-closed circuit. But as they waited by the car for their assigned instructor, we gave it a twist.

The instructors that came out were actually road crash survivors with evident physical injuries. The students remained unsuspecting, though we sense a first wave of uneasiness cross their faces.

The lesson starts with run-of-the-mill questions like where’s the clutch or the blinkers. It’s when the students least expect it that the instructors begin to recount the story behind their injuries - caused either for drink-driving or sleeping at the wheel. The naïve youngsters go from shock to compassion to consternation. They know it could have been them.

We edited the experience into one main video covering all lessons and four more with full individual lessons.

We found four car crash survivors willing to help us set it all up in front of the cameras and we also attended several theory classes to select kids about to have their first driving lesson.

The student drivers arrived to the circuit ready to start and were told by a school employee to wait by the car for the assigned instructor. Then our instructor walked up and it all happened like a real class. In the end, we asked the students how they would behave behind the wheel after that experience.

On March 22nd, the campaign came out on Facebook and individual stories were on the website. Then, on the following two weeks, from Thursdays to Saturdays, the days of the week when most of the young people go out at night, we focused on a mobile strategy on Facebook to reach the youngsters with the best timing.

For reference, Portugal has less than 10 million people.

More than 1.5 million organic views in less than 48h.

Overall 2.5 million views on social media.

65 thousand shares.

Got coverage by major national TV networks.

The community reached out to us whishing for the project to become a mandatory experience for all driving apprentices from then on. As a matter of fact, we were already working on that, and it gave us more strength to take the message through generations of new drivers. Thus, in an alliance with driving schools from all over the country, Brisa is already planning the implementation of the Striking Lessons experience in every first lesson of regular driving courses, making it an integral part of the process and experience of getting a driver’s license.

This video activates a road safety message through a small-scale stunt, an unscripted experience that confronted young student drivers with the real dangers of careless driving. The experience directly affected a small group of youngsters but it was its amplification on social platforms that made people vicariously live a version of that experience and effectively generate a conversation online. The campaign yielded a widespread reaction on social media with great results.

We collected data from Brisa’s own records and the public statistics produced by the National Authority for Road Safety and the World Health Organization. We reached two insights as to why young drivers (18-24) were a more vulnerable demographic. First, they’re more inexperienced. Second, young people have a tendency to feel immune to life’s hazards, which makes it easier for them to start behaving riskily and carelessly as soon as they hit the road with their driver’s license. We realized we needed to talk to young drivers even before they became drivers. Before they had incubated any vices.

As a call-to-action, we respected the students’ naive worldview (“It won’t happen to me”) and confronted them with the fleeting aspect of the notion as soon as the instructors begin to tell their stories and their eighteen-year-old naivety dissolves into the real-life consequences of dangerous driving.

Road accidents are the main cause of death and serious injury in young people up to 24 years old. Almost all of them are due to avoidable risk behavior. At the same time, hundreds of youngsters in their late teens and early twenties receive their driver’s license every day. It couldn’t be more urgent. We were asked by Brisa, Portugal's Highway Company, to deliver young drivers a safety message in an unforgettable way – so that it stays with as they grow into experienced drivers.