"Gravel Truck" is something of an oddity - it boasts one of the most gruesome-looking accidents in all the TAC canon, and yet the ad as a whole is not, by their standards, fantastically memorable. In fact, in my head it's always lived in the shadow of "Mates", a similar (although somewhat less graphic) ad from New South Wales' Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA). The execution of "Mates" is frankly a lot naffer, but that works in its favour. As a cautionary piece, it's got not shortage of character. "Gravel Truck" has the smash factor, but doesn't have the...let's call it the smarts factor. The lingering discomfort that a particularly striking safety ad leaves on your psyche when it's done. Can we dig in and figure out why?
Before we get started, there is some discrepancy concerning the title and debut year of this entry. Multiple YouTube uploads and at least two different PSA wikis have it down as simply "Gravel", with both wikis stating that it's from 1993. The Monash University Accident Research Centre's 1999 study, however, lists the title as "Gravel Truck" and the year as 1996, and that's the source I'm going with. 1996 seems about right to me, since it strikes me as characteristic of TAC's output from specifically the mid-1990s, when they were at their absolute peak with their televisual trauma farming. Nothing was withheld in making those shocks as bold and salacious as possible. We had the combusting vehicle in "Fireball", the all-out crunching of the combi in "Nightshift", the kid going under the wheels onscreen in "Mum In A Hurry" (most other ads would have been tasteful enough to cut away and leave that to your imagination, but taking prisoner's was hardly TAC's thing), and the almost Final Destination-esque twist of that giant tanker lunging out of nowhere in "Bush Telegraph". All of which made for hard-hitting imagery. Still, I wonder if in "Gravel Truck" we are starting to see the limitations of this technique. The problem with relying too much on shock value is that viewers will potentially grow numb to it after a while, causing you to chase after bigger and ever-more outrageous spectacles, to the point that they risk becoming so over the top that they lose their ring of credibility (there is a certain infamous Northern Irish speeding PIF that I think absolutely falls into this trap - you surely know which one I'm talking about). I'm not saying that "Gravel Truck" is anywhere near that level of extremeness, but it is in rather an odd in-between space, like TAC were experimenting with shocking viewers with a more nauseating Red Asphalt-style approach that was centred on gaping at bodily injury, but then good taste (mostly) prevailed and they decided to be as moderate as possible about it. It goes simultaneously too far and not far enough, and as a result it cancels out what identity it might have had.
It is another scenario in which multiple factors have a hand in the accident, with the particularly deadly ingredient this time around being the speeding. There are shades of "Tracy", in the visible P symbol on the vehicle (indicating that the driver is new and inexperienced, despite his protests to the contrary), and "Fireball", with its emphasis on the hazardous nature of the country roads, even to people who think they can handle them. At least the young occupants of this specific doomed vehicle are a less rowdy bunch than the kids in "Darren" and have their seatbelts buckled, although it doesn't do much to spare them from the carnage in question. We learn that they're on their way to pick up Sophie, who will apparently be "dark as" if they keep her waiting. Jess, the front seat passenger, is the sensible party in this equation, repeatedly berating the driver Gary for going too fast, while back seat passenger Nick encourages him to hammer it. Gary suggests that it's the bumpiness of the terrain that's getting to Jess, and insists that they're in safe hands because he's driven this route numerous times. Having haphazardly overtaken one truck without incident, they encounter another truck coming in the opposite direction, prompting both vehicles to swerve to the side to pass each other on the narrow road. Unfortunately, since Gary is driving too quickly and impulsively, he doesn't see the obscured danger until it's too late - there is a school minibus travelling close behind the truck and, thrown slightly off course by the gravelly surface at the side of the road, he nearly blunders right into it. He manages to swerve, just clipping the minibus, but loses control of the car and sends it hurtling into the bush, where it makes a truly brutal side-on collision with a tree. The dust settles, and we catch sight of not only the lifeless bodies slumped inside the wreckage, but Gary's mutilated remains lying beside it (we recognise that distinctive chequered flannel he was wearing). The impact really seems to have ripped him up; the camera doesn't exactly hone in on it, but it lingers long enough for you to notice that he might be missing his head (I'm not totally clear, but he's certainly missing something). We've seen glimpses of bloodied corpses before in TAC ads, like the girlfriend in "Fireball", but this is on a whole new level of gory detail. Or at least it would be if it weren't so curiously soft-pedalled (if you're going to be that graphic, then you might as well go whole hog with it). The image of decapitated Gary falls a little flat as the ad's final zinger, but at least the impact of the car against the tree is astoundingly savage - to the extent that we're not doubting the seriousness of the accident and the gorier touches don't really add much. It comes off as a half-hearted attempt to tack on a gratuitous shock for viewers growing wise to the formula.
Something that is notably absent from "Gravel Truck" is any kind of emotional follow-up with the grieving parties, which isn't necessarily what denies it the smarts factor. I have gone on record as saying that this particular aspect of the TAC formula is the one that can be hit or miss for me, since my preference tends to be for more understated displays of emotion. Sure, there are times when a more overblown reaction is entirely appropriate - I think "Beach Road" and "Mum In A Hurry" are examples of ads that manage to justify it, in lending an inescapable realism to their appallingly tragic scenarios. On the other hand, some of the most unsettling TAC endings have been the ones that handle the reactions of surviving characters in a low-key fashion, such as the trucker's drooping shoulders at the end of "Nightshift" and the final words of "Bush Telegraph". They close their ads on a more muted note, but it stays with you. "Gravel Truck" looks to be going for a similarly understated approach in having the camera pan briefly to the minibus, where the audience of murmuring children within function as a Greek chorus on the unspeakable horror, only it's still such a melodramatic detail that I think comes off as a touch comedic (albeit not to the charmingly awkward extent as the comparable ending in "Mates", where a busload of schoolkids gawks at the wreck with a seemingly gleeful fascination like the proper little monsters they are).
The smarts factor requires more than lurid spectacle (whether it be physical, emotional or both). We need a reason to feel a connection with the characters, and like there are real lives being devastated here. I do wonder if the real reason why "Gravel Truck" makes less of a lasting impression is because it's overall less narrative-driven than some of TAC's other ads - the characters touch briefly on their plans for that evening and on the need to pick up Sophie (whoever she is), but we're not given a huge sense of the wider world and of their place within it. Compare it to, say, "Fireball", where the opening dialogue established the characters' connections to the local community (setting up for the epilogue's twist), but also the broader life plans that were about to be tragically terminated. All of this was in service of the message about these kids being at at home in the country, yet still succumbing to its perilous roads, but it gave you a strong enough taster of the kind of lives they had been leading. One of TAC's greatest strengths was in how they were able to blend the build-up to an accident with the details of the everyday, whereas in "Gravel Truck" much of the dialogue feels a little too openly expository and repetitive. There's a lot of repeated emphasis on Jess's objections to Gary's speeding, and on Gary's insistence that he knows the road. Perhaps ironically for a speeding ad, the build-up feels slow, and not in a deceptively calm way, but in a way that's taken up by a large amount of empty space. Like a lot of TAC ads, "Gravel Truck" exists in two different presentations, the full 90 second version and the shorter 60s second edit, and for the most part, I don't think the former benefits from being so long. Lost from the shorter cut are the comment about Sophie being "dark as" and a moment where Gary casually lists off the layout of the route ahead: "You go up over this rise, there's a sharp turn to the right, another dip then it's a quick left." He is, perhaps inadvertently, listing off the various points where mishaps could easily occur if adequate care is not taken, and shrugging them off as they're no big deal. It's a classic case of familiarity breeding contempt, establishing Gary's overconfidence and indicating that he isn't making any allowances for the possibility of something unexpected entering the mix. It is a useful narrative detail, but it causes the subsequent sequence where Gary hastily overtakes the first truck to feel redundant, since it doesn't tell us anything about Gary (or Jess) that we don't already know. I'm not really seeing why we needed to have both of them. I have considered the possibility that the latter might potentially have been intended as a fake out moment, where we expect the accident to happen and the characters get away unscathed (only to crash further up when they push their luck one time too many), but I'm not sure that it plays that way - it feels as though it's there purely to reinforce the point about Gary being a habitually reckless driver.
Where "Gravel Truck" does excel is in one of its most subtle yet ominous touches - the cloud of dust rising off the road as they make that turn in the opening, establishing the rougher nature of the road and foreshadowing the part the treacherous terrain will play in the accident. I'd argue that this is the only serious means by which the shorter edit loses out; the dust cloud kicked up in the 90s second version lasts longer and is considerably more impressive. The dust is, without question, the star of the piece. Not only does it pepper the journey with a hint of impending instability, the way it rises and settles at the end makes for a poetic final visual, even more quietly affecting than the mangled corpses it's swirling above. Dust they are, and to dust they have returned.
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