Stupid but well meaning slogans

I was driving into St. Louis yesterday and one of those lighted construction signs flashed the following message at me:

Buckle Up

Arrive Alive

The problem is that I actually thought about what the sign said instead of focusing on, and associating, the words “Buckle” and “Alive.” Silly me.

Don’t get me wrong, here. I fully support seat-belting and believe that the car should not move unless everyone is buckled-in, even if all you are doing is changing parking spaces in a lot. So I’m absolutely pro the intent of the sign. It is the expression that is ill conceived.

Think about it for a minute. If you are buckled-in and, God forbid, need to have been buckle in, then you are likely not going to be arriving at your destination anytime soon (unless you just happened to be headed for the hospital). Buckling-in does NOTHING with regards to arrival anywhere, and, in fact, if you do happen to arrive on time, you probably avoided mishap and being buckled-in mattered not an iota. It is the association of arrival with buckling that causes the dissonance, because those two are not related. It would have made much better sense to say:

Buckle up

Stay Alive

Or

Buckle up

Arrive or Alive

Or something along those lines; not to implicitly associate seat belts with arrival. Putting the way I saw it on the sign means that anyone who thinks about what was said will realize there is a certain disconnect there. That makes the person who authored the message less intelligent and by implication, less authoritative. And that devalues the entire message which is… tragic.