DWI message finds home in urinal
Tax dollars at work
“Hey there, big guy. Having a few drinks?” a female voice says a few seconds after an approaching male sets off a motion sensor in the device. “It’s time to call a cab or ask a sober friend for a ride home.”
The message is a way to reach one group that is a target of state safety campaigns, Transportation Department spokesman S.U. Mahesh said. Men commit about three times as many drunken-driving infractions as women.
The devices are manufactured by a New York-based company called Healthquest Technologies Inc., which also sells a product for women’s restrooms that flashes messages on a screen affixed to the stall door.
The urinal version, called a Wizmark Interactive Urinal Communicator, was invented by Richard Deutsch, who says there’s no other device like it on the market.
Public awareness campaigns in New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Australia have used the devices, as have commercial advertisers.
“The idea is based on the concept that there is no more captive audience than a guy standing at a urinal,” Deutsch said. “You can’t look right and you can’t look left; you’ve got to look at the ad.”
In New Mexico’s case, the device uses the DWI slogan that has appeared in recent Transportation Department television commercials and printed material: You drink, you drive, you lose.
Tom Trowbridge, who works in the department’s marketing division, said he plans to distribute the devices to Santa Fe bars and restaurants—including the first local participant, Tiny’s Restaurant and Lounge—as well as establishments in Farmington, Gallup and Las Cruces. Some Albuquerque bars installed the devices this week.
The state spent $21 for each talking urinal cake for the pilot program but will ask bars and restaurants to pay for future orders if the devices catch on, Mahesh said.
The cakes have enough battery power to last about three months.
About 500 urinal cakes with an audio message are being distributed to bars and restaurants in the state.
