Scared safe

Steve Loftin

PCS Member
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I guess there's nothing more "period correct" than watching old films of when the cars we love were actually being used. Most everyone has seen "Signal 30," "Blood On The Highway," "Mechanized Death," and other classics designed to show what happens when the rules of the road aren't followed. My favorites are the ones produced by the Ohio State Highway Patrol between 1959 and 1970. Here is "Wheels of Tragedy," in five parts, from 1963:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqmnNgzlEl8&feature=related[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jJpRmMWbMo&feature=related[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJuINdsqshk&feature=related[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyLVjg7Ybv4&feature=related[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1rcDIUwToA&feature=related[/ame]
 
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"Signal 30" - 1959

The grandaddy of 'em all, in four parts:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx-rXEdaGao[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5fHQyp9ytA[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G844qTtTShA[/ame]

http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hTVDDe8v04

Part 4 is in link form because the site deems some of the content to be a little graphic, and therefore is "adults only." I remember seeing these for the first time when I took driver's education in high school. I had been around the funeral home for some time by then, so there isn't anything graphic in these films that I hadn't already seen.

I wish more of the ambulances were shown, but they weren't the focus of these films. We do get to see how patients were handled at the time. When was the last time any of us made an ambulance call in a suit?
 
This clip from "Highways Of Agony" shows the undertakers on scene with '63 M-M Paramount and '65 S&S Park Row combinations. Note the handling of the boy with the back injury...no immobilization, no backboard, and unused straps on the #11 stretcher.

With appologies to Walter Cronkite, "And that's the way it was...:"

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzr7CHX_0b0[/ame]
 
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Thank you for posting this Steve! Like Steve, some of us here whether we are EMT's. firemen, paramedics or undertakers, etc have seen this type of tragedy or the aftermath there of many times first hand. I personally think that they still should show these films in drivers Ed today as drinking and driving, drug use while driving and careless driving like texting while driving for example has taken many young lives over the past few years.
 
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