South Dakota has second thoughts on 'Don't Jerk and Drive' ad campaign (VIDEO)

After one legislator decided the slogan surrounding the public safety campaign was a little less than tasteful, the South Dakota Department of Public Safety prematurely pulled the ads urging drivers to “Don’t Jerk and Drive” even though they were a big success.

“Winter driving can be treacherous. Should your tire leave a snowy or icy road, resist the urge to jerk the steering wheel,” the ad explained. “Over-correcting only results in chaos, and besides — nobody likes a jerker.”

And apparently the ad was right – nobody, or at least not Republican state Rep. Mike Verchio, likes a jerker. In fact, it’s probably not even appropriate to discuss jerking (not to be confused with twerking).

“When they say, ‘Yeah, there’s some double-meaning there,’ I think that was a terrible error in judgment,” Verchio said.

Nonetheless, according to Lee Axdahl, the director for highway safety, the questionable ad still reached a whole lot of people and was likely the climax of the department’s ad campaigns.

“The ad campaign, despite the second thoughts, was shaping up to be incredibly successful for South Dakota,” Axdahl explained. “More than 16,000 people saw the campaign on Twitter in its first week. Page views at the DPS’s Facebook page have jumped to almost 30,000 since the campaign launched, outperforming previous public safety campaigns 25 to 1.”

The moral of the story? You really shouldn’t jerk and drive, but if you do, keep it to yourself.

[Argus Leader]