Super Bowl Sunday is just as much about the game as it as about getting together with family and friends. But people don’t always make the best decisions when traveling to and from those parties. 

Driving home the point about the consequences is Jim Reaper. It was a typical Super Bowl party at The Barrel House in Sioux Falls on Sunday until he crashed it.

“Kind of took me by surprise, I really wasn’t sure, like, what his story was today,” Tamara Dettler of Sioux Falls said.

“We came face to face with death today, and he didn’t say much, if it was a he, but it was very terrifying, yeah,” Brooke Kemnitz of Sioux Falls said. “Not something I want to encounter ever again.”

“Totally not expecting a grim reaper, no, so, no,” Dettler said. “Fun, though.”

Jim Reaper is the creation of Lawrence & Schiller advertising agency and part of the Drive Safe South Dakota campaign. You may have seen the commercials during the game. 

“We want to make sure that we’re promoting people driving safe and making sure that you’re calling a DD, not texting and driving, wearing your seatbelt, and this is kind of a fun way for us to get out and talk with people,”  said Marta Lehn, business development specialist with Lawrence & Schiller. “He obviously attracts a lot of attention, so we’re able to kind of start some of those conversations.”

Death isn’t exactly an easy topic, so maybe approaching it with a little, well, dark and honest humor can go a long way.

“It’s a terrible thing that people are dying out on the roads and getting injured in car accidents,” Lehn said. “With the Jim Reaper, it’s a little bit more of a light-hearted way to start that conversation and to remind people of really the dangerous things that can happen.”

“We don’t want to meet Jim again, so we’re going to be safe with our driving,” Kemnitz said.