Like Watching an Accidents?

Hope everyone in Canada had a great Canada Day! I was on vacation in Vancouver, which has great scenery and even better food. The traffic system there always bothers me, but I guess there's only so much you can do. Traffic is bottlenecked at bridges and gridlock is bound to happen with rush-hour and car accidents. But what about clogged traffic from none of the above?

While trying to make my way to Port Coquitlam (where I was staying), we had to travel on the highway from Vancouver headed east. It was around 4:00 and traffic was backed up assumingly because of the conditions mentioned above. As we kept moving, we noticed an accident scene (no one was hurt luckily) on the other side of the median. It wasn't blocking traffic since the mangled auto shop courtesy car had been pulled into the median barrier, but right after we passed that accident, everything started moving swiftly again. It turns out that the flow of cars was slowed because everyone was gawking at the accident! About 5 minutes from where we were, everything slowed to a crawl again. Hoping that this time, it'd be a credible reason for this catepillar movement, we were proved wrong once again. Traffic only started to flow normally once we passed a scene where police had pulled over two young hooligans driving a Corvette. Ridiculous! How can some event that doesn't physically impede traffic, actually impede traffic? Don't people care how their momentary inaction affected everyone else?

Sounds a bit angry doesn't it? But looking at it from a marketing perspective, that's phenomenal! 3 lanes of traffic in opposite directions during rush-hour were all looking at these scenes to the point where it slows everyone else down (which essentially makes them look). It's human nature to look, hence the old train wreck cliché. My co-worker has told me of an effective use in the past where a MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) campaign placed two wrecked vehicles in drunk driving accidents by the side of the road with the message "Don't Drink and Drive". If only we could harness this better than the traditional billboard.