Taking the P*ss?

In days gone by, those deemed to be too "overly refreshed" to drive would be asked by the attending law enforcement officer to walk in a straight line to ascertain the level of sobriety. Those who slalomed down the road like a down-hill skier would have their car keys confiscated before being pointed in the direction of home with some stern advice ringing in their ears.

Nowadays, education seems to have taken the place of hands-on prevention. With fewer police officers around to stop determined drunks getting in their vehicles, it has been left in recent years to grisly posters and blood-splattered commercials to try and persuade death-wish drinkers to take a taxi home. Sadly, the number of deaths and accidents attributed to drunk driving seems to show that the message in this medium is not getting through.

Maybe it is because these adverts and public service announcements never crop up when you’ve had a skin-full. Or they do and you're just too plastered to take any notice. When sober, the sight of an X-rated anti-drink driving message with mangled steel and broken bodies can convince even the most wayward soul to stay off the sauce. But put ten pints inside that soul and you might as well be showing him Starsky and Hutch re-runs.

Which is why advertising gurus Saatchi & Saatchi have developed the next generation of educational devices aimed at teaching would-be drunk drivers a lesson: the Piss-Screen.

Driving simulator powered by driver's own stream

Realizing that posters and TV spots rarely grab the attention of drunken men unless they star barely-clad females, the advertising company -- commissioned by the German city of Frankfurt am Main and its taxi drivers -- has designed its learning tool to be used in the one place where it is almost guaranteed that drinkers will see it. Away from the bar, and fast food outlets, men on the lash will always have to relieve themselves. Which is why the Piss-Screen is positioned in the pub urinals.

In an attempt to keep potential drunk drivers out of their cars and get them safely into one of Frankfurt's numerous taxi cabs, the Piss-Screen combines the interactivity of a computer driving game with the necessity of taking a leak.

By peeing on either the left or right sensor on the game pad positioned in the urinal, the driver can steer the car through computerized streets on the screen in front of him.

The more drunk the driver is, the slower his reactions are likely to be. The slower his reactions, the higher the chance of him having a gratuitously nasty on-screen crash. The thinking behind this being that the nastier and more gruesome the crash, the more likely it is that the driver will realize how hammered he is which in turn will lead to him getting a cab home.

A recipe for beer-fuelled disaster?

While this is an honorable attempt at preventing unnecessary deaths on the real-life streets of Frankfurt, the creators of the Piss-Screen have overlooked one of the main factors in the psyche of the drunken male.

Inebriated men become hugely competitive. Crashing the car in the Piss-Screen game will only make the drunken man more determined to complete the course successfully. This can only be exacerbated by having a whole wall of wasted guys trying to piss their cars around the course faster than the others while making high-pitch Formula One noises.

However, after emptying the bladder on one attempt, the drunken man -- now more determined than ever after his first crash -- will return to the bar for more fuel. The next few attempts will of course show a rapid deterioration of driving skill, angering the drunken man further.

A number of unpleasant scenarios

The end result could go a number of ways: the drunks tumble out of the bar into their own cars to really find out "who the daddy is," with unavoidably disastrous effects. More likely, the losing drivers will smash the Piss-Screens up in a rage before spending the night in the cells without, thankfully, claiming any lives. The third, and probably safest, option will be that the constant pit-stops will render all the drivers completely incapacitated.

In this final scenario, the Frankfurt taxi drivers -- who were so desperate for clients that they employed Saatchi & Saatchi to develop a campaign for them -- can go into the toilets and pick up as many passengers as they want off the flooded floors and charge them a small fortune to get them home.

Maybe it's not such a bad idea after all.