“Words cannot describe it. Amazing. Totally beyond crazy.” Those are the words of Gwinnett Technical College student Bethany Wheeler after winning a national contest that placed her original design on a billboard smack dab in the middle of Times Square in New York. Her design is simple, yet powerful…it is a chalkboard with a car and driver and the words, “I will not text and drive” written repeatedly. It really strikes a chord with those of us old enough to remember being punished in school by having to write sentences about bad behavior on the chalkboard.
The contest was for Project Yellow Light, a national campaign against texting and driving. It is a collaboration of forces from the Ad Council and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The NHTSA says that in the year 2014 alone, more than 3,170 people were killed and an estimated 431,000 were injured in automobile crashes involving distracted drivers.
You won’t have to go all of the way to New York City to see the winning design on display. The ad is expected to be on a billboard here in Atlanta very soon. It will be featured on the billboard on I-85 north, near Chamblee Tucker Road, as well as on a billboard on McGinnis Ferry Road, west of Peachtree Parkway. The design will also be displayed on digital billboards throughout the country.
Wheeler says she heard about the contest at the last minute, but was able to quickly turn around a design because of her recent internship experience. She worked as a graphics intern with the Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta. She says she worked on a lot of projects there and that made it easy to quickly turn around an entry, despite hearing about the contest with only a few days left to enter.
In addition to the prominent display of the design, Wheeler won a $2,000 scholarship that she says she plans to use on books and continuing her education.