Australia’s TAC really worried about your sleeping habits. The Transport Accident Commission in Australia has spent their waking hours with BBDO and produced new spot to promote road safety.

The spot ambiguously shows a woman peacefully falling asleep on what might be a pillow but actually turns out to be an airbag. She’s in a car that has just crashed into a light pole and her wreck could have been avoided. The stern narrator warns that sleep inducing chemicals build up in your brain all day and apparently not sleeping for 24 hours is equivalent to having a blood alcohol content of .10.

The ad is tremendously effective because of its shock value; it takes something like sleep that is supposed to be innocuous and jolts the viewer out of their complacency. Like managing partner of BBDO Lee Simpson said: “Falling asleep at the wheel, we wanted to show through the narrative, physiologically will eventually take over.”

In a slightly more questionable move, Australians who use the hashtag #yawnchallenge to caption a picture of themselves yawning are entered in a contest to win various prizes. I’m all for generating buzz via social media but some might take this challenge the wrong way and indulge in some vehicular selfies. Plus, who wants an up close and personal look at the inside of anyone’s mouth? Whatever the gimmicky ploys, a lot of drivers worldwide drive tired and the ad packs a pretty heavy punch that won’t put anyone to sleep.

Nice work, Aussies.

Howard Davidson from Arlington MA