Knowing how to drive defensively has been a topic since shortly after the car started being manufactured. Looking for a safety video at work recently, I stumbled upon this little gem, produced in 1964. This video includes many different makes and is proof that the truths about driving defensively are timeless.
Although this video is over 50 yrs old, its point is still as relevant today as it was then: drive safely. All the safety features in the car won’t protect you if you don’t use them along with good common sense.
I find that overly conservative or courteous driving is its own kind of danger. I’m surrounded by drivers who won’t turn right on red, who accelerate very slowly, who slow down excessively for turns and who avoid using the left lane for passing and in so doing become obstacles to more adroit motorists.
I’m sure most of them could indeed be said to be driving defensively. There’s got to be some way to update this concept.
Not turning on red has been exacerbated by the presence of red light cameras in recent years. Frankly I avoid those intersections, because when I end up in a right turn lane on red I’m not budging either, honking drivers behind me be damned. 3 bogus tickets will do that.
Ugh, being excessively courteous drives me nuts…like those who will let EVERYONE in the world go at a four-way stop. Today, I watched a lady, who was driving westbound and preparing to turn north and an intersection, stop in the middle of the main road and let a person who was stopped heading east (but turning north) turn in front of her! Argh!!!!
Now I have to be defensive against those well-meaning jerks.
Being courteous is one thing, but drivers are expecting other drivers to behave in a certain manner, and when they don’t, that just adds unneeded stress to one’s day.
Yes, the hyper-cautious are maddening. Like those who inch forward, instead of either going or not, which sets off neural alarms if you’re passing by. I’d rather deal with assertive drivers.
How about this: Drivers who won’t pull forward in the intersection on green, to turn left when safe. This denies those following an opportunity to turn before the light changes.
OTOH, I’ve seen a lot of people run red lights here in Tucson. I don’t mean bad timing, but solid red before they pass the crosswalk. So this town is a mix of careless & timid drivers; I’ve seen a lot more boulevard accidents here than I did in So. Calif.
Principle of Least Surprise: Drive predictably; sometimes •how• someone drives gives hints about future actions, like how close to the lane divider they are. I avoided a Volvo’s unsafe lane-change this way.
Good stuff. Tighten up the nut behind the wheel and it will be alright.
Highways or dieways, it’s your choice.
Something like this ought to be given as a DVD to those that purchase German cars here in the UK. At which the recipient states, ‘ooooh, a shiny mug coaster’.
Hit that Chevy so hard it was knocked back to the previous year!
Ha, I caught that. Knocked the 1963 right outta that 62 Chevy!
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
La plus ca change, la plus c’est la meme chose.
I’ll definitely share this with my kids. The unintentional humor will make it interesting to the boys, and will (along with the era-appropriate sexism) get a withering look from my daughter…
Remember this shown in 1971 driver’s ed class on a clackity old 16mm film projector along with early crash test films, bloody crash aftermath video’s such as “Wheels of death”, etc. Most of them are still found on You Tube. The biggest malfunction in any car has always been the loose nut behind the wheel.
The Chevy he was driving was a 63 Impala 4 door hardtop…but the car on the tow truck was a 62 Impala….
This film reminds me of how we watched films in elementary school in the 1970’s…..the old style reel to reel film projectors…..Many of the things discussed in the film still apply today…..I see lane changers on the interstates all the time….no signalling and weaving from lane to lane squeezing between other cars like they are running in the Indy-500…..and going from the left hand lane over to the exit ramp at the last possible second….cutting off other traffic.
The mishap on the part of the producers of the film can be seen at the 2:14 mark.
Here’s an award-winning Country video featuring a car wreck where they either crashed the feature Cavalier or got an identical model.
Just my pompous opinion from childhood…it’s FAR easier to teach these kinds of lessons when you sweat the details. No amount of gore compensates for the realism lost when it’s obvious the crashed car isn’t the one being driven two minutes before.
If that’s what was playing on my radio I’d probably crash too, purposely! blech!
Good fun, and great to see all the old cars, but take the message with a grain of salt.
I can’t see something like this without being reminded of (killjoy) Ralph Nader’s “Unsafe at any speed”, which I finally read a few months ago.
A theme of Nader’s book is the effort the automakers, particularly GM, went to de-emphasise the role of vehicle design in road safety. All this “nut behind the wheel” stuff, including this film, is part of that.
Nader’s point was that there’s no need for your front seat passenger to break his/her front teeth on the dash after a sudden stop, or for the car maker to specify undersized tyres while fitting yet more chrome ornamentation.
The “National Safety Council” or the “Citizens Traffic Safety Board’ (named in the credits) could have been a few of the motor industry-funded puppet organisations (referred to in the book) used to give credibility to the their gumpf.
It worked! Safe vehicle design was delayed by many years.
I don’t disagree with a word you say. I’ll take it even further and state the safety aspect of cars was but one element of driver safety back in the day.
How about guardrail with blunt ends? It worked to sever cars and people pretty well. New thoughts brought about guardrail with turned down ends, allowing vehicles to ramp or flip over. The crashworthy end sections are now under scrutiny with recent revelations about a modification in design by one manufacturer that rendered them harmful.
Another would be drainage; curbs on rural highways look nice but will pool water. I routinely drive a section of Old US 66 that is the original 1930s era four-lane concrete. Water can pool (and freeze) quite nicely there. The curbs also allow errant cars to bounce back into traffic. This section also has a short and narrow median that can be traversed easily at speed.
Even the number of business and residential access points will influence the number of collisions.
I have no doubt there was unwillingness by the manufacturers to adopt safer designs (Tucker had them and Ford tried it unsuccessfully in 1956) but it was only one ingredient in a recipe of factors in the number of highway deaths back then.
We did a full stop on installations of those end treatments here in SC and are not allowed to comment on anything other than they are not allowed to be installed anymore per legal – which means there’s blood in the water and the sharks are getting a sniff.
I was not downplaying vehicle and road design earlier. They are very important, but secondary. Most accidents can be prevented by defensive driving, but not all. A coworker’s mother was just killed 200′ from her home by a drunk at 4 in the afternoon. He’s fine of course. She was simply too old to withstand the energies imparted on her. Is it Toyota’s fault? Is it the DOT’s fault? Is it law enforcement’s’ fault? She drove a safe modern sedan. The road was widened to current design standards just a few years ago. Law enforcement took this “nuts” license away already. Sounds like it was all on the “nut” to me and this nice grandma got put in the ground prematurely as a result. My coworkers kids were in the car too. They could withstand the energies thank God.
Let’s focus more on the “nut” I say.
Sorry if I’m editorializing too much. I love cars, roads, and driving. As a civil engineer who’s a road guy like you, it’s my vocation and part of my avocation as well.
We are so on the same page about this.
There have been exposes about those guardrails, apparently one of the major manufacturers of the stuff switched to thinner-gauge metal without changing the specs or otherwise informing anyone, to increase profits…
Safer driving along with safer car and road design is the complete package.
They were still showing these movies when I took Driver’s Ed back in 1988: “Wheels of Tragedy,” “The Smith System,” all that good stuff. This looked really, really old to a 16-year-old in the late ’80s, but the lessons are timeless.
Good basic information here, and watching all of the old cars in action is a bonus! Pretty much all of these rules still apply today. If anything, the much-improved safety designs in modern cars has made some drivers even less concerned about accidents than they used to be, when a car accident was much more likely to lead to death or disfigurement.
That red 64 Plymouth convertible was a sweetie, as was that pair of 64 Fords. I loved watching the dual exhausts as Mr. Jackrabbit in the Vintage Burgundy sedan peeled out.
And did anyone else catch the 55 Studebaker sedan going through the intersection at about 6 minutes?
Sadly I have never yet seen one of those old training films but I sure did see lots of mangled wrecks and dead bodies in my career .
For decades I had this nifty book about re designing curbs so they’d deflect vehicles back into the lanes , no one ever wanted to look at it so I eventually tossed it out .
-Nate
Interesting old video but I still prefer Bondurant’s high performance class at the former Sears Point Raceway for hands on. Did like the cars in the video.
Movies didn’t work on teenagers then, and still don’t work.
What DID work on me at age 17 was looking at the place where a friend had died after missing a curve with his TR3. I looked a bit too carefully and saw part of his brain on a rock.
Cured me of reckless driving instantly and permanently.
I didn’t got that movie when I taked driving lessons but we got “Freewayphobia”.
Only one “ferrin” car, a VW, I spotted on the streets of Los Angeles and Chicago in 12:33 minutes of film. This must have had Detroit industry input.
At about 6:10 is an American Airlines Convair Astrojet adding to the vintage machinery eye candy.
Trying to “teach” drivers to not crash is useless. Everyone thinks of themselves as the best drivers in the world; it’s all the other idiots out there responsible for the carnage. Thankfully, we have a much more scientific approach to the matter of highway safety. Safer cars and safer roads are very much what has led to the dramatic drop in the fatality rate (and even the absolute numbers) since this film was made. Seat belt use laws and a more serious approach to drunken driving have helped considerably also.
I agree, I think these videos only validate people who already drive like this, even the ones that don’t will probably rationalize it – “Well I drive like this most of the time”. As a teenager these kinds of videos are simply a fantastic time kill, it means I don’t have to participate, do work, think or even stay awake as I normally would have to to pass the class.
Drivers in reality have probably gotten worse since these videos were made frankly.
Some good scenery, especially as a Chicago native. The scene at ~10:50 shows the offensive Galaxie headed north on the Ran Ryan, with the nearly brand new Robert Taylor housing projects in the background, all of which were torn down barely 40 years later.
Drivers HAVE gotten worse since this lovely film. Drivers today, and I see this every day in my commute, are basically doing everything BUT driving. Shaving (men) putting makeup on (women) while throwing fast food in the general direction of their face while reading their text messages from the ex they just broke up with again last night, despite having the make up sex they thought would solve all their problems. And did I mention all the while staring at their navigation screens, and sipping on the quart and a half of coffee from Starbucks? I drive, and always have, with the mindset that I am on a motorcycle. Always remembering you are SURROUNDED by idiots could save your life! Great find and glad you posted it. And the cupholder was THE worst thing to ever happen to an automobile. It was the beginning of the mindset that, sheese, I can actually do TWO things behind the wheel?