The Car Ads On Our Screens May Be Shaping How Fast We Drive. Researchers Say That Is Not an Accident.

Nearly half of all car ads feature speed or performance, and fewer than one in twelve mention safety, a new report has found. And that gap has consequences.

The new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety analyzing nearly 3,000 automobile advertisements on American television, streaming platforms, and social media found that performance themes appeared in 42.7% of ads analyzed, with speed, power, or performance specifically depicted in 16.3% of ads.

Safety, by contrast, was a theme in just 8.1% of advertisements, and that number falls over the last several years. By 2022, safety appeared in fewer than 3% of ads, down from more than 10% in 2018, according to the study. Over the same period, performance themes climbed from 38.5% to nearly 52% .

“The cars on our roads are safer than they have ever been, but the way they are being sold is a different story,” said Chris Hagan, partner and attorney at the Law Office of Chain | Cohn | Clark. “When speed is glamorized in ad after ad and safety barely gets a mention, it shapes how people think about what driving is supposed to feel like. And we’re now seeing the consequences of that culture.”

What the Research Found

The IIHS study analyzed advertisements from Nielsen Ad Intel, a service that monitors major media including television, digital streaming, and social platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. The dataset covered more than 9.5 billion weighted ad impressions across the three years studied.

Researchers coded each advertisement for 23 predefined themes, ranging from performance and speed to safety, family use, and advanced driver assistance technology. Results were weighted by advertising spend, meaning an ad that aired thousands of times carried more weight in the analysis than one that aired rarely, producing a picture of what viewers were actually being exposed to most.

The findings were consistent across vehicle types, though the specifics varied. Speed themes were far more common in sedan advertisements than in SUV or pickup ads, appearing in more than 36% of sedan ads in 2018 and climbing to 46.5% by 2020. Pickup truck ads emphasized overall performance at the highest rate of any vehicle class, with performance themes present in more than 85% of pickup ads in 2022. SUV performance advertising grew steadily across all three years, from 27.5% in 2018 to nearly 45% in 2022.

Ads featuring speed were also significantly associated with portrayals of the vehicle as exciting or fun to drive, a pairing the researchers noted may reinforce attitudes that normalize high-speed driving as an aspirational experience rather than a risk.

A Cultural Framework for Speeding

The study raises questions that extend beyond advertising content. The researchers noted that while a direct causal link between automobile advertising and individual driver behavior has not been definitively established, there is existing evidence that media content shapes attitudes, and that attitudes shape behavior.

A national survey of speeding attitudes cited in the study found that while nearly 90% of respondents agreed that everyone should obey the speed limit, 61% classified themselves as either speeders or sometimes speeders. More than 91% agreed that people should keep pace with the flow of traffic, a belief that effectively normalizes speeding on roads where the majority of drivers are already exceeding the limit.

The researchers draw a parallel to how other dangerous behaviors have been handled in advertising. Tobacco advertising on broadcast media is federally prohibited. Alcohol advertising operates under voluntary industry restrictions. Depictions of unsafe driving speed, despite contributing to nearly 12,000 traffic deaths in the United States each year according to federal data, face no comparable constraint under current regulations.

The United Kingdom has taken a different approach. Under rules from the Advertising Standards Authority, motor vehicle advertisements in the UK are prohibited from demonstrating power, acceleration, or handling except in the clear context of safety. No equivalent standard exists in the United States, where broadcasters develop their own guidelines. ABC’s standards state that safe and lawful driving practices should be depicted at all times, with seat belt use and distraction mentioned as examples. Speed is not mentioned. NBCUniversal’s guidelines require advertisers to portray compliance with standard safety precautions, again with no specific reference to speed.

“We figured decades ago that you cannot sell cigarettes on television because the harm to the public outweighs the commercial interest. Nearly 12,000 people a year die in speeding crashes, and we are still running commercials that make going fast look like the whole point of owning a car,” Hagan said. “At some point that becomes a choice the industry is making, not an oversight.”

The Pandemic Period and What It Revealed

The study’s dataset spans three distinct eras: pre-pandemic 2018, the pandemic year of 2020, and the early post-pandemic period of 2022. The shifts across those years illuminate how advertising themes track alongside broader social conditions and, the researchers suggest, may reflect and reinforce changes in driving behavior.

During the height of the pandemic in 2020, traffic volume dropped sharply on American roads. Speeding increased. Traffic fatalities rose. Federal data cited in the study found that an estimated 17% more people were killed in traffic crashes from May 2020 through December 2022 than would have been expected based on pre-pandemic trends, and the number of drivers killed in speed-related crashes exceeded forecasts by more than 24%.

During that same period, performance themes in automobile advertising held steady or increased. By 2022, as pandemic restrictions lifted and consumers returned to the roads, performance advertising nearly doubled in prevalence as a primary theme, rising from 12.4% in 2020 to 26.8% in 2022. Safety advertising, meanwhile, fell to its lowest point in the dataset.

The researchers describe this convergence carefully, noting that both trends, increased performance advertising and increased speeding, may reflect a broader cultural shift toward normalization of risky behavior rather than one causing the other. The question of influence, they suggest, warrants further study. What the data establishes clearly is that the two trends moved in the same direction at the same time.

“In a courtroom, when two things consistently move in the same direction at the same time, we call that relevant. We do not call it coincidence and move on, Hagan said. “The fact that speeding deaths and speed-themed advertising both surged during the same period is exactly the kind of evidence that demands follow-up, not a footnote.”

What This Means on Kern County Roads

Highways 99, 58 and 178 carry tens of thousands of vehicles through Kern County every day. They also carry the full weight of American driving culture, including the attitudes about speed that decades of advertising have helped shape.

Speeding is a contributing factor in a significant share of the serious crashes the Law Office of Chain | Cohn | Clark handles throughout Kern County and California. It appears in intersection collisions, highway crashes, rear-end impacts, and single-vehicle rollovers. It amplifies the consequences of every other dangerous behavior, including distracted driving, impaired driving, and fatigued driving. A recent IIHS study found that the faster a driver was traveling over the speed limit, the more likely they were to also be manipulating a handheld cellphone, compounding two of the most dangerous behaviors on the road simultaneously.

In personal injury and wrongful death cases, speed is often one of the most important factors in determining both liability and damages. Evidence of how fast a vehicle was traveling at the time of a crash can come from event data recorders, witness accounts, traffic camera footage, physical evidence at the scene, and in some cases the vehicle’s own telematics systems. Establishing that a driver was traveling significantly over the speed limit strengthens the case that their conduct was not simply inattentive but reckless, a distinction that matters both legally and in terms of the full compensation available to an injured person or surviving family.

“Speed is not an abstract issue for our clients,” Hagan said. “It is the reason a collision that might have been survivable wasn’t. It is the reason a broken bone became a fatality. Every 10 miles per hour over the limit is a significant increase in crash force. When a driver makes that choice and someone else pays for it, we want families to know they have options.”

What the Researchers Recommend

The IIHS study concludes with a call for the automobile industry and the broadcasters that carry its advertising to treat unsafe speed the way they treat other dangerous behaviors: not as a feature to be celebrated, but as a risk to be acknowledged.

The researchers note that today’s vehicles are more reliable, more efficient, and safer than at any previous point in automotive history. Advanced driver assistance systems, automatic emergency braking, lane departure prevention, and blind spot monitoring are now standard or near-standard features across most vehicle classes. The technological story automakers have to tell about safety is a genuinely compelling one. The study’s finding that safety appeared as a primary theme in fewer than 3% of 2022 advertisements suggests that story is not being told.

For consumers, the study offers a useful frame for evaluating what car advertisements are actually communicating. A commercial that shows a sedan accelerating through a curve on an empty road, set to music that signals freedom and power, is making an argument about what driving should feel like. That argument has consequences that extend well beyond the showroom.

“For families who have lost someone, or who are navigating serious injuries after a crash involving a speeding driver, the cultural context documented by this research matters in a specific way. It situates an individual driver’s choices within a broader environment that has consistently treated speed as desirable and risk as glamorous,” Hagan said. “That environment does not excuse the choice. But it helps explain why the problem persists, and why the work of holding individual drivers accountable remains as important as ever.”

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If you or someone you know is injured in an accident at the fault of someone else, or injured on the job no matter whose fault it is, contact the attorneys at Chain | Cohn | Clark by calling (661) 323-4000, or fill out a free consultation form, text, or chat with us at chainlaw.com.