My awkward video with SDOT’s director

I partnered with my mortal enemies over at the Seattle Department of Transportation. And yes, it was incredibly awkward.

A few weeks ago, SDOT reached out and asked me to participate in a video promotion for a new contest to encourage us all to be safer drivers.

I decided to put aside my criticisms of SDOT and Director Scott Kubly and get behind this message. It’s a good one. Safer drivers mean safer streets and that means less traffic snarls from accidents. I assume it wasn’t an easy decision for them to reach out to one of their loudest critics since I said this, this, this, and this. Kudos to them for partnering with me. I can’t wait to see which urbanist troll complains first — I have a bet going.

I arrived at SDOT offices this week to film the video with a script that I ended up rewriting a bit; they know my snark and wrote some good lines, but I wanted to get a bit more edgy. Most of my awkward jokes remained in the script, though they cut one of my favorite lines (want to know what it is? Listen to my After-Show podcast at KTTH.com or on iTunes).

Learn more about the contest here. 

Awkward is the key word with all of this. The video, as you can see, is awkward (in a cringe-worthy, but fun way). My producer wasn’t able to finish watching the video, but I hope you will get to the end so you can learn how to enter the contest and watch as I show how much of a better driver I am than Scott.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz