We watched a lot of videos in driver’s ed class in high school, because they saved the teacher/football coach from having to do much teaching himself. We had to write summaries of most of them, and he had an interesting grading system: if you wrote less than half a page, you got an F. If you wrote at least a whole page, you got an A.
Before I get too far off-topic, there’s one video in particular that’s stuck in my head the last 21 years. (I’m pretty sure the video is a lot older than that.) It came into my head again because it was Halloween-themed. I may have forgotten some of the details, but here’s the gist of it:
Some people are at a Halloween party, doing tequila shots. (I think this is how I actually learned how to do tequila shots!) I think “House of the Rising Sun” was playing in the background. Later on, the friends drive drunk and get into a car crash. At least one of them died. At the very end of the film, they show a still photo of the clown hat from the costume belonging to the dead person.
If anyone else has seen this video or could give me any other details (title, etc.), I would be grateful.
Again, only a fictional one, but when Beavis & Butthead take driver ed the class has to watch some horrific ‘scared straight’ driver ed film (‘Blood on the Pavement’ or something). Anyway, at one point you hear a huge crash and screaming and everyone in the class is grossed out and covering their eyes. Except of course for B&B, they’re both enthralled with their eyes glued to the screen, and Butthead says,*** “Cool, his brain fell out!” ***
We saw some of the crash and burn ones, but only one that really made sense in a useful way. It was called somebody’s system of “space cushioning”, and it simply made a great point. That point is that if you keep your distance from the other cars on the road, you’re a lot less likely to get into a wreck involving another car.
We didn’t have “videos” when I was taking driver’s ed. We had old-fashioned B&W movies made in the '50s and shown on a noisy projector. You had to turn the lights out to watch them. It was much creepier that way! :eek:
The one that sticks in my mind is PROM NIGHT. Which, as you might imagine, practically wrote itself. I can still see the heroine’s face smashing into her date’s windshield at 90 miles an hour! Eeeeuuuuuuwwwwwww!
The great thing about that video was that the actors were dressed as early-1960’s “greasers” (30 years out of date already in the 1990’s), prompting Butt-head to go “Whoa, these guys are cool!”
I remember it was kind of a rite of passage to sit through this. I should watch it again and see if it’s as horrific as I remember. I know a lot of those driver’s ed films from that era were made using real highway accident footage. Was Mechanized Death the one that had the guy with the steering column through his chest?
ETA: The spouse remembers one called “Red Asphalt.”
I don’t remember any titles, but there was one that went on and on about using your seat belts. A big part of the video was taken up with shots of accidents where people hadn’t worn seat belts, and of video footage of what seemed to be crash tests of various European cars with live passengers wearing seat belts. I asked our driver’s ed teacher about that, and his comment was that other countries don’t treat their prisoners as well as we do. :eek:
Otherwise, most of the movies we saw were from the mid-late 1960s and early 1970s and by 1989 were so out-of-date that they were more regarded as comedies by the students than anything more serious.
I remember one all about the horrors of “under-ride” which is when a car runs into the back or side of the trailer on an 18-wheeler, sometimes decapitating the car’s driver and/or passengers because of the height of the bottom of the trailer.
I remember the blood-and-guts/Scare’em Straight videos. My friends and I were convinced they were still shots from third rate horror films. Our teacher insisted they were the real deal. We remained unimpressed.
In my driver’s ed. class, we would regularly make use of simulators. These were toy car-like contraptions, not quite the size of an amusement park bumper car but outfitted with a steering wheel, floor pedals, turn signals and what not. A film was projected on the screen and you “drove” along as the route proceeded forward. (The simulators were bolted to the floor lest you think we actually toodled about the classroom.) The teacher manned some type of control console that kept track of driving errors made by the students. At the end of the film, you received a score based on how you did.
The film I most remember was one that dealt with mechanical failures that might come up whilst driving. The first one dealt with the hood latch coming undone and then --Surprise!-- flying up into your field of vision and completing obstructing where you were going. The narrator intoned that the driver shouldn’t panic and slam on the brakes nor veer wildly hither and yon but instead if you scrunched down low enough and peered outward from the bottom of windshield, you’d be able to make a sufficient visual reading to safely guide the car out of harm’s way.
In 30+ years of operating an automobile, I have yet to have this happen but goddammit, when the time comes, I’ll be ready.