On Tuesday, July 19th, 2016, Eva Brindisi Pearlman received the “Friend of the New York Association for Pupil Transportation” award for her “energetic and passionate” efforts in the “Shame On You, Nissan” campaign as well as advocating for school bus camera legislation to prevent illegal passing of school buses.

In November of 2015, Ms. Pearlman released a blog post and a petition on Change.org to remove a commercial by Nissan depicting a father racing a school bus to get his child to school.

She felt the commercial depicted examples of dangerous driving habits, which inspired her to act on it.

The campaign targeted Nissan’s promotion of unsafe driving habits, irresponsible parenting, and neglect for school bus safety in their television commercial.  The campaign also utilized Twitter and Facebook to evoke a response from consumers in Upstate New York and gave them the ability to voice their opinion on the television commercial.

Ms. Pearlman was notified within days of starting her campaign that Nissan was removing the commercial from the airways.

Dan Bedore, Director of Communications for Nissan North America, Inc., released this statement last November that Nissan was pulling their “Miss The Bus” commercial due to receiving complaints regarding the commercial”

“Our Altima “Miss the Bus” commercial was intended to tell a story in an irreverent and entertaining way.  After hearing from The National Association for Pupil Transportation and many school transportation professionals, we realize that our attempt at humor has been perceived as a slight to those people who do an honorable and invaluable service to their communities.   School bus drivers are entrusted with our nation’s most precious resources, our children.  We thank them for their service and dedication to safety on the roads and apologize for the attempt at humor that resulted [in] an unintended offense.  We have removed the ad completely from all of our national and regional advertising rotations.”

It did not appear that Nissan had any plans to end the campaign until pressure began to be put on them, so the fact they were willing to not only pull the ad but did so immediately is unprecedented.

Ms. Pearlman practices in the field of civil litigation, with an emphasis on personal injury law. She is dedicated to making Central New York a safe place for all that live here. She frequently blogs on many safety issues that can be seen on her firm’s website.

 

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