Blood on the highway

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Yes I can remember those "blood & guts" shows during Drivers ED.When my brother was in pre-med training-saw one of the films THEY had to watch-a show about FARM Machinery accidents-this was in the East part of S.Dak.The worst scenes were those of farmers that had their hands or even arms ripped off in corn pickers.another picture showed a scalped person-his hair got too close to the tractor PTO.At how some folks drive around here-maybe the blood and guts shows to be shown to them at any opportunity.Esp what happens to a car and driver that "races" a train at the train crossings!And not to mention pedestrians that step between the cars of an idling train parked at the switchyard!-It could move anytime.
 
I had heard about Signal 30 but by the time I took Drivers' Ed in 1968 the local school decided it was counterproductive. So I had to wait until about 2002 until I was able to find and download it from the web.

www.archive.org has it, plus gems like "Duck and Cover" and many vintage appliance related film shorts, as well as the famous Jam Handy series on just about any techno wizardry from the 30's through the 50's...

 
I took drivers ed in the summer of '78 and saw similar films. They were produced by the Tennessee Department of Safety (the driver license-administering agency in Tennessee) and seemed to be of late-50s to mid-60s vintage, although they were all in "glorious" color. While they were hard to watch, I think the idea behind the premise is a good one -- at least it was for me. From that day to this, I have always taken driving very seriously and I think I am in an extreme minority. It appears that most people's lowest priority is driving when behind the wheel of a vehicle. A catastrophe takes only a fraction of a second and people just don't seem to get that.

I'm glad that the licensing requirements are tougher than they used to be. I got my learner's permit at 15 (written and eye exams and parental written consent) and my full-fledged driver's license at 16. Since I had the learner's, all that was required for the regular license was another eye exam and the road test. I lived in a small rural town in the South and my road test was circling the courthouse (involving intersections with stop signs or traffic lights) and then parking in the same spot I left 3 minutes before. I didn't even have to parallel park! (And I didn't know how until I moved to a major city years later and had to learn!) The only advantage is that my dad had started teaching me how to drive on traffic-free, deserted country roads when I was about 13, so by the time I was 16, I had it down.

The way things are now, if I had kids, they wouldn't drive until they're 30!
 
You must be 18 y/o!

Here in Italy, when you are 18 years old you can ask for your "foglio rosa" (= pink sheet) which is the previous certificate of your diriving licens (type B = for car, while A is for motorcylce)generally one month later than your birthday date, and there are some restricsion at driving with that as you have to have somene seating near you in the car, with at least ten-years driving experience, when you are practicing; that lasts six months in which while you have to pass theory exam, and then if you have passed the theory exam, the practical exam. If you're godd it would take you less than 3 or 4 months, if you are in late you have to pay again to ask another "foglio rosa" :-)

Bye
Diomede
 
Was it Signal 30 that had the scene where the poor widowed wife/mother was selling off the contents of her house and the two biddies that helped cause the accident arrived to scavenge? I had Drivers' Ed in summer school and was taught by our baseball coach. He was exacting. The first day we went out in the car, Curtis pulled out of the school parking lot and was over the 25 MPH speed limit in no time. Coach told him to pull over and stop. He asked if they should just go to Police Chief Brown's house and ask for a ticket if that was the way he was going to drive. It used to be that to get a driver's license, you only had one place to go for the driving test and that was on Confederate Ave., in Atlanta. The test course was well deserving of its frightening reputation as were the officers who tested your driving. Fortunately, just before I needed my learner's, the DMV/MVA or whatever started offering the testing, both written and driving, in an empty parking lot behind our neighborhood shopping center one day a month. One friend went to take the driving part and immediately flunked when he went over the 15 MPH speed limit for the course. I took the test in my Dad's Buick Wildcat and I had a small note for myself on the front seat. #1, fasten seatbelt. #2, use "L" not "D" on the shift lever. I don't remember #3, but I passed. I always wore my seatbelt. It kept me from sliding around on the leather or vinyl sets of the cars I drove back then. One afternoon, I was driving home from school with my brother in the passenger's seat. As we came up to a large intersection, a car making a left turn coming toward us was broadsided by a car traveling ahead of us in the lane next to us. As we slowed way down to get past this, we saw, on the other side of the intersection, a little girl crying in the ditch on the opposite side of the road, after having been thrown from one of the cars at 55 to 60 MPH. It was hard to believe how far she had been thrown and all I needed to see about wearing seatbelts, even though I was a confirmed wearer, even as a passenger. My brother had Drivers' Ed. with the football coach of our school and my father told me early on that he saw a definite difference in our driving. My brother did not wear a seatbelt. When the power steering in his brand new Mazda locked the wheels all the way to the left because a small particle of metal, that should have been filtered out by a screen that other manufacturers used, plugged a jet in the pump as he was driving up Interstate 85 in traffic and not speeding on his way to visit me. He was in the inside lane and the car rolled three times after it went into the ditch in the median. With no seatbelt, he was thrown from the car and the only injury he had was a skull fracture where his head and the car met. It was 20 years ago in October and we still miss him very, very much.
 
Anybody can get a driver's license...even illegal aliens

The states are now checking Social Security numbers with the Federal Government for authenticity (the issuer). (SS#s are as close as we get to a national ID number).

New York State revoked THOUSANDS of Drivers' liscences.
But the campesinos---- er immigrantes illegales--figured out VERY quickly that you can still get one with NO SS# check in NC (North Carolina).

So guess who gets harassed MOST in my area?
Vehicles with NC plates/tags! HA!

In my area, being a TAXI driver in the immigraint communities is a STATUS job. It means you are a LEGAL alien.
 
Drivers ed

Drivers ed for me was lame. There were no simulators :( , no blood and guts movie (maybe that was a good thing), and no scary driving course. I think there was like a video on safe driving but NO bloody, gory accident movies.

I did my driving test in my mom's Lincoln Town Car. The driving tester said, "You want to test in this big old car."?

Tom, Signal 30 had an interview with a widow who lost her husband in an accident.

Wheels of tragedy had more of a plot or little subplots. You saw the stories and the re-enactments while Signal 30 just showed the carnage. hehe hehe hehehuh huhu huhu huhu yeah yeah huhu hehe hehe FASTER FASTER!!!!
 
I missed out

When I was in high school they didn't show us bloody driver's ed films. As I recall, they showed a tape of Melissa Sue Anderson explaining the importance of seatbelt use. All the gore was saved for the baby-birthin' films.
 
Te he he

I was the projectionist for that there type of baby-birthin' film.

Let me tell you how much fun it was to to hit the *REVERSE* button. (The teacher had left the room at the PERFECT time!)

LOL that thing looked like a vacuum cleaner with everything flying back INTO it.

LOL ROFL LMAO
 
When I was a kid in Kansas...

I started to drive when I was 11 years old, mind you, illegally! I was out on the farm and it was the only way to get from one point to the other! I started driving grain trucks to the elevator when I was 13. No permit, no nothing. Pretty amazing that a kid of 13 years could haul 36,000 pounds of wheat in a single trip to the elevator!

Anyhow, high school rolled around took the driver's ed class. The "final" in driver's ed class (If you passed the test) was the driving test to get your license. So immediately after you passed the driving test you went up to the dempartment of motor vehicles and took the written test which was a watered down version of your semester final in the class. Usually it was a piece of cake.

Class C is for cars and light trucks, D is for motorcycles. Then there is A and B for big trucks and chauffer's.

duetboy

aka jeff
 
The baby birthin video

Yes, I saw that as well. Amniotic sac and all..

So I guess they showed a horrific car crash and after a pregnant woman is rescued, she gives birth. Drivers and Sex Ed all in one. We could call it Signal 69
 
My dad got all three of us kids driving his manual tranny 1969 blue Chevy pickup out on the "farm" when were youngsters. My sisters were too small to sit in the seat and reach the accelerator, so one would sit up there and steer and the other stood or crouched on the floorboard and pressed the pedal. Of course, dad was in the truck. We "graduated" to country roads and such. Still with him in the truck. I took driver's ed in school, there was one crotchety fellow name of C.D. (Charlie) Winstead who taught it for years and years. The school provided a car for road-learning, three guys (or gals) and the instructor took several planned spins through town and to the next town for learning the various skills. There was a written test in the class, and when you passed that then there was a road-test with a patrol officer. I did the road test in our 1973 Ford Country Squire. Parallel parking a station wagon, lord have mercy.
 
yuk yuk, oh Jason.

Believe it or not I took my road test in a HUGE V8(Cylinder) Chevy Impala. Boxy as can be. BUT that ridge down the center of the hood (Bonnet=> UK) and the hood ornament made it a dream to park.

My !@#$%^&* '98 Saturn SL2 is typical of today's cars-- can't see the @$$ at all in the mirror. A real B- - -H to park.

(BTW mehtinks the SL is short for slut-mobile).
 
uh yeah but that i like me saying to you i'm serving Mouse ka- ka....... er I mean moussaka.

'SPLAIN LUCY
What is it?

My idea of being in the *country* is a place that has trees.
I'm from a glass steel and concrete jungle, y'all

Grain elevator? to me that is a fork to lift kasha to my mouth.

*CAREFUL LINK HAS MUSIC*

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lldzines.com
 
I took my driving test a couple of days after my 16th birthday in January of 1975. I had just purchased a SWEET 1968 Olds Delta 88 4-barrel with a 455. It was a dark green 2-door with a white textured vinyl top. I was stylin', man.

ANYWAY, as luck would have it, there was a raging snowstorm happening. The guy giving the behind-the-wheel test walked up to my car and said "We'd better do this another time." After much begging and pleading on my part, he relented and jumped in. When he slammed the door, one of my fuses blew and I suddenly had no turn signals.

I gave him my most pathetic puppy look and he said "Just go! Use arm signals. We've gotta get this done."

Consequently, every time I had to use arm signals, I'd roll down the window and snow would blow into the car. I muffed parallel parking because a snow drift had obscured the curb, but he only took 2 points off my score.

And that's how I became a legal driver during a blizzard.
 
Hell's Highway

I have the DVD that I linked to. It's a documentary about the guys who would rush to the accidents, camera in hand, and compile these horrific Driver's Ed movies. It also has a disc with three "classic" driver's ed movies on it.

I can recommend this as a fascinating documentary.

I had to sit through one of these films in my high school days. There was a clip of one of the scenes from the movie I had to sit through in the documentary, but I couldn't determine which movie it came from. It wasn't one of the full-length films included in the DVD set.

Why the hell do have this in my collection? I don't know. Why do I have anything in my DVD collection? There's just no good answers for some questions.

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www.imdb.com
 
not just driftng, but swept away

Toggle, the neatest thing about grain elevators is the danger of explosions with all of that grain dust in the air. It has to be kept dry to prevent fungi and molds, so as the tower is being filled, the dust and danger are very real. When I was a kid in Illinois, our small town had a grain mill and one day it blowed up! After hearing the explosion and the fire sirens, etc., I just had to see it. My parents, after much begging on my part, took me past the place that night and there was still a visible glow from what was still burning in the basement. Got home and had to fall asleep on the sofa near mom and dad because I was afraid of our house burning. Still don't like to watch things burn, but explosions, volcanic eruptions, etc. can be neat to watch.

We never got to see baby-birthing films, but I remember this drive-in theater in the Atlanta area that always showed X-rated films in the 60s. They actually advertised in the Atlanta Journal on the page that listed all of the other movies and often the second film on the double bill was Birth of Twins. That would have been wild in reverse. "Well, I don't like these two a bit and am gonna' send them back!"

Toggle, I'll bet you looked like a choir boy when you were growing up, just like in the snow blower picture, and used it to your advantage. You could raise hell and never even once be suspected of being the "instigator" as my mom would say.
 

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