TACtics: Tracy (Speed Kills)

TAC's premier ad, "Girlfriend", might have launched with the explicit intention to "upset, outrage and appal", but you could argue that they pulled a significant punch in not introducing the possibility of death to the featured scenario. Lucy was at risk of losing her leg thanks to her boyfriend's bloody idiocy, but the only reference to fatalities as a prospective outcome came from charge nurse Karen Warnecke's comment about how, if the driver survived, they were the ones who had to live with the damage they'd caused. TAC were clearly in a more emboldened mood when they put out "Beach Road" and "Tracy", two anti-speed ads from the dawn of the 1990s, which saw them shifting in a palpably harsher direction. The TAC formula was still undergoing refinement - meaning that, as with "Girlfriend", we're not witness to the crash in either - but both are bleaker pieces than their predecessor. Not only were their victims shown in all the more critical condition, they also upped the emphasis on the howls of despair that would become TAC's trademark as much the blood and the crumpled bits of metal.

Of the two, "Beach Road" adheres more closely to the formula of "Girlfriend", by including an in-person narrator to act as Warencke's equivalent, a paramedic who talks to the camera and explicitly introduces TAC's anti-speeding tagline, "Don't fool yourself, speed kills." Again, it's the enlightened authority figure who's seen it all and is required to take it in their stride as part of their job, but is evidently appalled at how people keep making the same dumb mistakes over and over. "Tracy", whilst retaining the pseudo-documentary feel of its brethren, dispenses with the narrator altogether, instead putting all of its focus on the perspective of the irresponsible driver. Like the boyfriend in "Girlfriend", they've emerged from the crash they caused relatively unscathed, and spend much of the ad pushing to be brought up to speed on the condition of their passenger, who has taken a much more brutal pummelling, although (very much in contrast to "Girlfriend") the viewer is kept in the dark along with them until the end. The first responders have a more muted presence here - the faces of the paramedics questioning the protagonist are not clearly shown, and their voices, while discernible, are notably more subdued than that of the protagonist, whose hysteria is allowed to be the ad's dominating force. Neither "Beach Road" or "Tracy" shows the victim making it as far as the hospital - in "Beach Road", the unfortunate kid is pronounced dead at the roadside, while the titular Tracy is last seen being loaded into an ambulance, with the driver panicking about the possibility of her not surviving the journey. Technically, Tracy's fate is left hanging, which should, in theory, make it a less upsetting piece than "Beach Road", but it's hard to look at the final arrangement and envision any kind of positive outcome. Of interest is the plot description given in the Monash University Accident Research Centre's 1999 study:

"Shows a crash scene identifying that an inexperienced female driver, with her best friend as passenger, has been speeding, gone to change a tape and consequently crashed into a tree. She calls out “Tracy, Tracy” and that she really wants to go and see her. Tracy is trapped in the car, is freed, but dies. The driver is overwhelmed that she has killed her best friend."

 

The writer of this description appears, ostensibly, to have jumped the gun in declaring Tracy dead, because the paramedics within the ad don't; it is the distraught driver who makes that final harrowing assessment. Is the above summary a testament to just how much more persuasively her voice comes across above the low-key murmurs of the first responders, or to how the open-endedness of the scenario doesn't actually equate to hope? The ending leaves us stranded in an uncomfortable dubiety; much of the ad's bitter, lingering aftertaste comes in giving the final word to the driver, in lieu of that jaded, fourth wall-breaking professional who's seen it all before and could interject a degree of certainty into the proceedings. The narrating paramedic in "Beach Road" was ultimately powerless to prevent the bleak outcome of that ad, but his authoritative presence nevertheless gave the viewers some form of emotional grounding. He represented the voice of reason amid the mindless chaos, as was Karen Warnecke in "Girlfriend". Here, the paramedics are still enforcers of decency and common sense, providing equal parts admonishment (insinuating to the driver that she was going too fast) and protection (they want to keep the driver from seeing Tracy to spare her the horror), but their downplayed role makes them less of an obvious counterbalance to the protagonist's outbursts. Notably, they offer no real certainty on the outcome; the protagonist asks one of the paramedics if Tracy will die, and receives only a non-committal, "I don't know." We are left to fixate on the emotional state of the driver, and while she is the character with whom our perspective is most firmly aligned, there are points where her messiness throws us off, becoming its own show of perturbing fluctuation - when questioned if she was aware of the speed limit in this zone, her face momentarily contorts into a nervous snicker. The onlookers in the backdrop are also a nice touch; while presumably concerned about the situation, in practice they come off more as gawkers to the horrific spectacle, their relentless gaze but another stiffening of the driver's entrapment.

The scenario in "Tracy" is a slight variation on that later seen in the Drinking & Driving Wrecks Lives PIF "Mates", with a driver pleading for forgiveness from an injured friend who is in no position to answer. Here, the severed relationship is between two teenage girls, and the driver has a more overt sense of vulnerability; all-round less snivelling than her "Mates" counterpart, we do not doubt the sincerity of her remorseful wails, but her words are certainly no more effective. In "Mates", the labored breathing of the injured party came to function as a condemnatory response in itself, whereas here the final damning rejection comes in the abrupt slamming of the ambulance doors. It is a cold conclusion to a friendship rendered meaningless by one party's willingness to endanger the other through their own reckless decision-making. Again, it goes back to what I was saying in my coverage of "Nightshift" about less being more and the little things being what should ideally get to you in a safety ad. We don't need to be outright told that the driver, as the survivor, will have to live with the consequences - that much is discernable from the desolate denouement.

For as well put-together as "Tracy" is, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, I have questions about how effectively it works as an anti-speeding ad. Although the closing title makes it clear this is the intended takeaway, anyone attentive to the details will pick up that what caused this accident was a real hodgepodge of improper judgement. It could just as easily have worked as a warning against distracted driving - the driver mentions that she was in a hurry and attempting to change a cassette when the crash occurred. Furthermore, there is a P-plate visible on the front of the wrecked vehicle, meaning that she is a provisional driver, and thus inexperienced. It could be that "Tracy" was always designed to speak foremost to those fledgling drivers so intoxicated with the thrill of being able to drive that they've forgotten their vulnerability. I wonder how many older viewers saw this and thought, "Well, those kids were obviously stupid. I'm an experienced driver and I would never change a tape while speeding, ergo this doesn't apply to me," and stuck with their bad habit.