Road safety, controversy over adverts without seatbelts. The ministry: 'It will be changed'

There is controversy over the new MIT commercials to promote road safety by highlighting dangerous behaviour among those that create the most road accidents: drug use, distraction by mobile phones, high speed. The boys used to narrate the episodes, trying to photograph moments of euphoria, are almost always unbelted. But the films will be changed, assures director Daniele Falleri, who says he regrets this, while the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport specifies that the films have not yet been aired on public television, nor has their actual scheduling been defined.

The three commercials released by the ministry all focus on the misbehaviour of a group of boys and girls who get into a car and in one case smoke a joint, in the second case distract themselves by looking at a mobile phone, and in the third decide to make a run for it by travelling at high speed. At the end of the commercial, the image is split: on the one hand, the wrong behaviour and the accident can be seen; on the other hand, the different outcome of the evening if the driver refuses to smoke the joint, asks not to be disturbed or, as in the third case, just does not start the engine and invites for a pizza. 'You don't make the right choice, you make the only possible one', says the driver-testimonial Giancarlo Fisichella at the end. But in none of the different situations do the protagonists of the commercial wear seat belts. On the subject, which garners a lot of criticism on the various social channels, there is also political interest.

The Pd group leader in the Rai surveillance commission Stefano Graziano intervened to ask the publishing department to block the new campaign on road safety. In a note, a group of M5s deputies did the same, attacking Salvini: 'Looking closely at the advertisement,' the Pentastellati deputies said, 'all the people in the car are without seat belts fastened. A hoot: it is the sad confirmation that Salvini and road safety are two parallel lines destined never to meet'.

The director then intervened, explaining the intent and announcing some changes. 'We regret,' said Falleri, 'the controversy surrounding the commercials on road safety, which were made solely with the aim of making young people aware of certain behaviours in everyday life, without any sweetening. The intent of these films is and remains educational, so we will make some changes so that viewers are not distracted from the only objective that is really close to our hearts: to make everyone aware of how they can contribute, each in his or her own small way, to saving lives'.