A first-of-its-kind video program created by WorkSafeBC is showing a new media-savvy generation of workers the horrible consequences of accidents by posting incidents from real life on YouTube, the Vancouver Sun reports.

From animated images of a faller being struck by a tree that shatters as it comes down, to the re-creation of a young female pizza worker losing three of her fingers while feeding dough into a machine, the videos are immediate, graphic and evocative, according to the Sun.

They are all real incidents that happened to people in the province of British Columbia, Canada. The YouTube videos are being downloaded and posted on company Web sites and are also being used by parents to educate their kids to be aware of hazards they could face on the job.

"We want this stuff to be downloadable, because then we know it is being used," said Scott McCloy, WorkSafeBC director of communications.

The most recent video, where an investigating officer shows step-by-step how a faller died while felling a dead tree, was posted on YouTube last Wednesday. By the next day, it had received over 1,000 hits, according to the Sun.

The purpose of posting the accident re-creations, said McCloy, is to raise awareness of safety as well as change attitudes and behavior.

One video, showing how a forklift operator died when one wheel of his machine went up the side-barrier on a ramp and toppled over, produced an immediate impact, McCloy said, when an employer wrote the next day saying a similar ramp and barrier situation existed at his worksite. He immediately stopped work and had the problem corrected.

"People are much more engaged, especially around issues of safety, when they watch effective multimedia," said Dave Blais, WorkSafeBC's senior manager of e-business. "We saw the real power of multimedia on the Web. So we wanted to get an even larger viewership. We saw the rise of YouTube, Google Video, iTunes, and we thought: 'How can we leverage that to extend our messaging?' This allows us to get our content to the right kind of audience.