DESCRIPTION OF THE ADVERTISEMENT
The material reviewed by the Board begins with a voiceover stating "Awesome Power. Frightening Beauty. And a bad attitude" as the camera travels through a forest area at nighttime marked with a private property sign. As the camera travels through, the night time mist gets thicker and the sounds of a car engine and tyres screeching are heard getting louder and closer. The advertisement is accompanied by the soundtrack of "Highway to Hell". A huge cloud of mist and smoke reaches up into the sky and lifts to reveal the new Holden Ute. The voiceover states "The new Holden Ute. Power to burn."
THE COMPLAINT
Comments which the complainant/s made included the following:
"This obviously represented a car doing "heli?s/doughnuts/burnouts. This practice is illegal on the streets, and is dangerous."
"I find this so irresponsible and offensive considering we are losing young drivers on our roads in the thousands. I feel Holden are promoting bad attitudes and very reckless handling of a motor vehicle."
"The advertisement incites drivers to break current traffic laws ("Hooning") in the states of Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania where such an offence may incur a penalty of permanent confiscation of the vehicle."
Who makes these complaints? What's wrong with doing hellis and burnouts in a controlled environment? How are they dangerous if there are no other people or cars around and common sense is exercised?
How many young drivers have died while doing hellis and burnouts? Since the car us usually stationary or travelling at less than walking pace when such maneuvers are being performed, I fail to see how this can be dangerous. Certainly not as dangerous as drivers jamming their brakes on infront of me when they see a roadside speed camera.
If I was a bit less sensible, reading those complaints would make me want to lay down a big fat set of linies at every opportunity, just to piss off the people who wrote them. I would argue that the wowsers are the ones who are inciting irresponsible driving.
If they want to complain about an ad that is seriously offensive, how about those inneffective "shock" ads that show traumatic car accidents and horrible situations, telling me that I will die if I drive 5kph over the speed limit. When I get home from work and put on the TV, I don't want to see a badly acted simulation of a horiffic car accident. It makes me unhappy and depressed, puts me in a bad mood and impacts on my evening when I'm supposed to be relaxing after work. I usually change the channel or make a cup of tea. If I had nothing better to do, I would file a complaint about those.
The picture below illustrates a guy (or a girl possibly) doing a classic burnout in a VP Commodore. While it is a bit of a waste of rubber and perhaps pointless is certainly can be a bit of fun. Hellies involve the car doing circles, producing similar smoke. Personally, I find hellies (doughnuts) a bit more fun than burnouts, because they involve a bit more skill, and the rear end of the car is actually moving. You can also reverse the lock at the right time and do figure eights and other silly things like that. Of course, you have to watch it or you can easilly buckle a rim if you hit a gutter (or something more expensive). Of course, it goes without saying that there are really dumb places to do stuff like this (anywhere where there may be people, traffic, buildings etc.), and there are places where it doesn't matter so much (1000km from anywhere in the outback, or on private property), although these complaining wowsers don't think you have the intelligence to work that out.
Burnouts and hellis are an integral part of Aussie culture, just like AC/DC, and their song "Highway to Hell", and must never be allowed to fall victim to the same people that want to ban bullbars, and make us use public transport by narrowing roads that are already busy. One day, if we are not careful, every last bit of harmless fun will become a socialy engineered taboo. Most Sydney motorists already trundle along blindly behind one another like sheep, with one eye on the speedometer, the other on the edge of the road looking out for speed traps.
