HIGHWAY MANIA 1937 DRIVER'S EDUCATION MOVIE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE MD40254
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- čas přidán 21. 01. 2024
- Made in 1937, HIGHWAY MANIA is an early driver safety film narrated by Lowell Thomas. It features stunning images of auto accidents, including some that are doubtless stunts from Hollywood films. At 1:43, there are images of the burning SS Morro Castle, a famous disaster that killed over a hundred;; yet Lowell Thomas says that today auto accidents claim four times that amount. At 2:00, a gigantic Florida hurricane is shown. The 1936 floods are seen at 2:20. "What can we do about the appalling loss of life?" says Thomas. He interviews Governor Harold G. Hoffman of New Jersey about traffic safety at the 3:00 mark, along with Commissioner McGee.
At 4:00, features of the New Jersey State Highway are seen that improve safety. The express highway shown is US Route 22, and at the time it was State Highway 29. The eastern 4 miles were all grade separated, as it was a connection to the Pulaski Skyway, which lead to the Holland Tunnel.
At 8:30, reports are seen that analyze varying accidents caused by bad driving habits. These habits are then shown in dramatic footage on the highway, with cars weaving in and out of traffic, driving on the wrong side, and even stopping on the highway to read a sign, passing on the left, etc.
Hand signals are shown at the 11:50 mark.
The film ends with various crazy stunts with cars, planes, and even horses - and these stunts are compared to the crazy drivers on the roads today. Be safe -- don't be a maniac driver!!
The express highway shown is US Route 22, and at the time it was state highway 29. The eastern 4 miles were all grade separated, as it was a connection to the Pulaski Skyway, which lead to the Holland Tunnel.
The NJ Turnpike did not open until 1951, and it was a black top highway. All of the NJ State Highways of the 1930s were done in concrete.
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Almost 100 years later, and this is still more relevant than ever.
Lowell, you do know 'going for a ride' in New Jersey is hazardous, in and of itself. This film is nearly 90 years old, and every scenario that can cause a wreck is still practiced today. Speed and inattention to others are still the top reasons for crashes. The views of that time are fascinating, remembering things and places that no longer exist.
And remember too, they didn't have cell phones and thus, no texting.
I grew up on LI, I know New Jersey all to well!
I see some of this crazy shtt on a main thoroughfare near my home in Pima County Az.
Especially if "Paulie" of Tony Soprano's "crew" is driving! BTW, is that Nosferatu driving in the opening scene?
Still.. IF the driving depicted in this film was as common as it appears, drivers appear to have been MUCH WORSE that era. Very cavalier attitudes on the part of drivers.
Late in 1938 for the '39 model year, Buick introduced lighted turn signals as an option, which became available on all GM car makes the following year. Yet, it's still a frequent problem that many people feel that it's an option to use them.
Come on,folks are just trying to conserve their blinker fluid.
@@markgrehlinger7117 🤣
They are depending on other people being mind readers.
@@markgrehlinger7117Good point.
The means for extracting organic blinker fluid from lightning bugs was still in its infancy. In about another 15 years synthetic blinker fluid was in its developmental stage.
"The more things change, the more they stay the same."
Wow..that's prophetic! Dream that up all by yourself?
Absolutely......the simple truth👍
For all the comments saying nothing’s changed: In 1937 when this was filmed, 13.19 people died in crashes for every 10,000 vehicles on the road. In 2021, the rate was down to 1.66. Looked at another way, in 1937 there were 14.68 traffic deaths per hundred million miles driven. In 2021 it was down to 1.5.
…but nearly all of that is due to safer cars and roads. Drivers haven’t changed! And in the past couple of years the death rate has gone back up a bit due to distracted driving.
Distracted driving = playing with their phone. Lets stop sugar coating everything.
Not merely distracted driving but a plain disregard for rules. At our corner stop sign, over half the cars don't even slow down, let alone stop anymore. People go right through at 20 mph and the visibility isn't all that great due to fences and parked cars! That never happened before 2020, and we've lived here for a long time. Also driving on the highways, people in the far left lane regularly go 15-20 mph above the speed limit. (It's everybody in that lane, not just the one or two racers who go 90+ mph.) Ten years ago this was not the case.
The auto industry really has made HUGE improvements in safety. Cars in the 30's were incredibly dangerous in a collision.
Geez!!! Those opening scenes of "fiends" look straight out of the "Cabinet of Dr Caligari"!!!🤯
Or a highway near you.
Every driver in Glendale, CA should be watching this.
Downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, East LA, take your pick. Driving habits have become more aggressive and less attentive all over.
Where do you think they shot the opening footage complete with audio.
That guy changing his tire in the right lane 👍
I saw some fool pop his hood in the #2 lane and start messing around!
The women walking in the road was a really bad idea.
While the filmmakers intent is a noble one, I'm sorry to say things haven't gotten any better in 2024!
In my neighborhood I saw the results of a practical joke that appears in a couple movies. The trick is to take all the lug nuts off a wheel of a parked car. In the movies the car goes about 10 feet and the wheel falls off. This one drove for miles until he took the long curve near my apartment. The left front wheel came off and rolled at speed into the other lane, center punching a light pick up truck with a young man and GF going out for a weekend evening. The pickup was totaled. The car that suffered the prank careered on until it hit a tree and partly crumpled the engine block into the cab.
No one was killed. The young man and his GF were walking around near their wreck. He was thrilled and she was in a slight state of shock. The driver of the car was moaning. Crumpled metal had squeezed his left leg breaking it. He had blood running from his nose.
AIR BAGS. Some things have gotten better.
@@dhm7815 Maybe automotive technology has gotten better, but drivers certainly haven't. And that wasn't a "practical joke", that was attempted murder! Police should have treated it as such!
This video says about 1200 deaths a year, with many many more drivers in 2021...the number of deaths was 697
CELL PHONES. Some things have gotten worse.@@dhm7815
This was just like watching the Russian dash-cam videos. They still drive like this.
In every country - yes, even in the USA.
Wouldn't do no good, they would just say that ain't me.
So do Americans - like it's the demolition derby.
I've seen some novel and interesting hand signals while driving in New Jersey. Definitely not meaningless though.
Don't forget the middle finger "salute".
Nobody uses hand signals anymore.
@@MarinCipollina
Nonsense. I drive a WW2 Willys MB.
@@-oiiio-3993 Thanks for being the exception that validates the rule.
The most widely used today is the middle finger.
Wow ,,road rage retro!!!
Every single driver was literally a pro racer ! clearly no one wanted to end in second place LOL
Lucky for us after million new rules added and 100 years of driving practice-NOTHING CHANGED, absolutely nothing. 😂
No, back then a driver would be charged with "reckless driving". Today, "hit&runs" are common place!
People may not have changed but driving is MUCH safer. Cars protect people much better in a crash, handle and brake much better to avoid one, and roads are much more safely designed.
@@Sashazur yes they are but cars are faster now too so it evens out again.And simply 80km/h is a lethal speed the rest is just luck.
New Jersey Turnpike came after WWII, original lower 60 miles opened Nov 1951. Express highway shown is present day Route 22
Agreed, if this film was made in 1936, the NJ Turnpike was nothing but a wet dream in a politician's nightmare.
US22 was originally the Jersey Turnpike dating back to the very early 1800s…you’re mistaking it for the New Jersey Turnpike(double meaning with the ”New”) which came after
@@loveanarchy8488…except it’s referring to the original Jersey Turnpike, not the New Jersey Turnpike
This is why my sole prejudice in life is against New Jersey drivers! I'm a retired professional driver from PA.
Come to Massachusetts.
@@arar8632 - I'm familiar with Massholes. They're better than NJ drivers!
Jersey drivers are statistically the worst in the country. Grew up in Orange County boarding New Jersey. The bad driving habits of Jersey drivers is legendary.
IMO New Jersey,Connecticut and Massachusetts drivers are easily the most aggressive!!
@@tomtbi They aren't any better in MO or TX either.
As a professional truck driver driven over the N. J. Turnpike as well as the Pa. Turnpike I don't thing either one has been worked on since either were built with the conditions their always in.
When I got my license in CA at 16 the manual showed the arm hanging down for stop, pointing up for right, and straight out for left. This surprised me. But the difference in time might be the reason. For me it was 1961.
I saw this and some other driving newsreel films from the 30s when I was in Jr High around 1973.
Love those "standardized" hand signals. Notice the advice was to always exit a parked car on the passenger or curb side. BENCH SEATS. That died out when bucket seats and fixed console armrests from Europe and Japan came in...60s and 70s.
All the old TV programs show everybody sliding in/out of the passenger side. When I was a kid, I don't remember anybody doing that!
@@FromSagansStardust did you live in the burbs?
This in 1937 so if this is your childhood are you in your 90s Junior.
I was a kid in the late 50s/early 60s, and the TV shows at that time were still doing the seat slide. Grew up in Bayonne & Jersey City NJ.@@STho205
@@STho205 One of the gents with which I play poker every other week was born in 1930.
@@STho205 I think they had bench seats long after. My 1965 Chevy had them.
0:55 Are you kidding? That's how people drive in America in 2024!
2 things i noticed: asshole drivers have been around forever & ALL cars were black.
Back then auto paint wasn’t as good. Black paint was better at holding up to weather and wear.
Lot of the cars were dark blue, green , maroon, brown which can look black in a black and white movie.
How can you tell the cars are all black? This thing is only made in black and white..genius
... and people were white. 🤔🤔🤔
The most amusing part is that the hurricane cost $3 million in damage!!
Well houses are the size of a small hotel now and have to be replaced with deflated 2024 dollars so damage costs are way higher numbers now “because climate”
Three million dollars of 1937 would be $64.25 million today per usinflationcalculator.
I have no idea why anyone might choose to refer to destruction, injury and deaths caused by hurricanes as "amusing".
I can only presume you haven't been at a city whalloped by a hurricane: electricity out, trees destroying homes' rooves, etc etc
Ive lived in several places when/ where a severe hurricane left huge trees down on major roads, knocked out electricity to many thousands of ppl in a city for multiple days; cellphone towers damaged/ no service etc etc
36'000 auto.fatalities in the US in 1936? .In 2022 there were about.47'000 auto fatalities in the US. We drive many times the miles (kilometers) now as compared to.the.1930's, so road.safety really has improved.
Likely also because of modern automobile safety features like seat belts, collapsible steering columns, crush zones, air bags, door beams, etc.
@@bruceferguson6637 Also, people drive a lot safer than the boneheaded actions.as shown in this video.
Great interview i remember watching this episode when i back in high school to get my Drivers tests and Driving license back in the year 1955😊
And 85 years later...Peeps ain't learned sh!t!!
That time counter is more annoying than commercial interruptions.
So applicable today s it was way back then
fascinating
9:40 When I lived in New Jersey in the mid-1990s, I rear-ended a car that didn't have its hazard lights on at night in a snow storm while it was stopped in the far-right lane of a major highway, I think near where Routes 1 and 9 merge. The driver was on the shoulder side of the road, fixing a flat tire. He never explained why he didn't drive the car onto the shoulder of the road out of the way of traffic.
That madman must be going 15 maybe 20 miles an hour
😂
Those hand signals were hilarious! Those guys were half in the bag, and it showed 😂😂😂
11:52 - Dig the "only three proper signals", particularly the right turn.
Their 'stop' looks too much like today's 'left turn, their 'right turn' is just bizarre.
Modern signals (same as I was taught in early 1960s) are:
Stop hand signal - extend your arm downwards with your palm facing backward.
Left turn hand signal - hold your arm straight out of the window.
Right turn hand signal - extend your arm upwards at a 90° angle.
It was funny to see Los Angeles trolleys in New Jersey LOL. Obviously stock film footage at the time. Was I the only one who noticed it?
Sure you did although I saw one in Camden.
Who has an employee named Fisher Magee? People who drive in New Jersey Do!
At 3:00 the NJ governor Hoffman being interviewed by Lowell Thomas was a panelist of the early days of What's My Line TV show . He was an advocate of highway safety in his short term as governor .
Have you seen these “Idiots in Cars” videos and the like? Same stuff still going on - only faster and with heavier vehicles.
Other than the change of vehicles looks & safety features in the last 100 years peoples driving habits haven't changed at all
People in Paterson NJ. need to watch this badly
In those films, I saw one other dangerous habit, which wasn't even mentioned: Hanging-out in the suicide lane!
Because that’s considered normal in NJ driving.
Saw alot of this habit in 2023 driving from Florida & through the Carolinas.
Coffin nose Cord at 12:37!
The Hand Signals are out of date by current standards.
Yes...now a 4th one.
We saw "Blood on the Highway " when I went through drivers ed.
When would that be? I tried to find it here and couldn't. In '72, I saw "Mechanized Death" (I was 16).
Saw "Red Asphalt" in Drivers' Ed.
Reefer Madness on Wheels! Tell your children to be afraid!
OMG I saw this on Rifftrax!
@ 10:00 I liked the black car with the spare tire on the back !
Cool video of days gone by. Everybody had a few pints under their seat and a pistol in the glove box. Just like today😅
For a few seconds I thought that was Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein. I watched it last night on Svengoolie.
2:40 Cool drifting.
None of these issues of any kind exist in the state of Texas. Thank You Very Much
Girl. You a bit delusional if you think Texans can drive any safer than this. You must live in a town no bigger than a stoplight because anywhere I’ve been to in Texas, y’all are the most unsafe and speed crazy and have car wrecks multiple times a day that are fatal. And then y’all just speed past the cops and ambulances that are cleaning up the previous accidents and then run into a barrier? Girl please. I’ve seen better driving from a 5 year old.
Now I know where the idea for "The Fast and the Furious" saga came from.
9:56 - LOL, but the camera car going the wrong way in the oncoming lane is perfectly safe. Amazing how there was a camera everywhere that something crazy was going on. I'm starting to believe about that time traveler with the cell phone as there are probably some with small portable video cameras to get this footage.
By 1937, the automobile lobby had already normalized the word “accident” for a traffic crash. It’s still mostly true today, although “crash” is used more and more as deadly road design and land use are recognized for their importance.
I rolled my pickup over in 1997, since then over 300 people have been killed in one car rollovers,
Our "traffic engineer "!? Soooo... its HIM thats responsible for all those stoopit jug handle turn lanes!
I niss the Jersey Jughandle!
The weird thing is, there really was far less traffic in the 1930s overall compared to today, but these scenes were filmed in busy northeastern New Jersey. No car safety features like turn signals or air bags, and no highways were yet built. And from what’s seen in this film, they had not yet developed pedestrian crosswalk markings in the streets.
take a wild guess where the bulk of cars were! those cars are why the US Highway routes were created in the 1920s and 30s
Where is that James Caan toll both scene thing?
You got Frankenstein behind the wheel in the opening credits probably on weed or the hard stuff 💀
Can you imagine the carnage if they would have had Smartphones back then.
And oblivious drivers are still with us 87 years later...SMH...
They don’t even touch on texting while driving.
It was difficult and time consuming. You had to have a typewriter in your lap and then you had to make a detour to the post office.
Now that is funny!!@@Sashazur
The narrator claims New Jersey came up with the innovation of the traffic circle. But the traffic circle has clearly met its expiry date given how often traffic IN the circle has to yield to traffic ENTERING the circle, while other states, even Massachusetts, have adopted roundabouts and roundabout rules for their traffic circles to avoid traffic gridlock within the circles.
At 13:24 with the police at the busy-intersection crosswalk: "To find out what would happen if these officers were not on duty, we arranged to have them removed for a few minutes."
Lol, omg ... can you say "journalistic malpractice" boys and girls?
They didn't even talk about impaired driving.
As a pro trucker of 48 years accident free 3.75 million miles on the roads to hell and back...my pet peeves are tailgating and in general non drivers in driving situations.
I was 12 years old back then? 🙄 Today 💯
As long as drivers know the odds of not getting a ticket for speeding and wreck less driving are in their favor, they'll continue playing those odds. There will have to be huge increase in patrol officers issuing tickets and people getting their license suspended or revoked to have any real impact.
Great job of staging those bad driving examples.
Drivers today do the same dangerous things and make being on the road with them risky and deadly.
They didn't have safety glass then, either
Like a few of the comments allude to, it's hard to believe some of these scenes were actually staged. I suppose Ringling brothers must have laid off all their Daredevil actors and they all applied for work at the Transportation Board. This was more exciting to watch than the latest release from the "Fast & Furious" franchise.
Cars now have turn signals. Drivers still can't signal properly
I see nothing has changed since 1937 .. At times I resort to aggressive driving to avoid accidents .
Not to downplay the seriousness of this topic, these highway safety videos never cite how many more cars are on the road. They claim how many more fatalities over the previous (let's say) 20 years, but not how many more cars there are in the same period. Or how many more trips per day.
Also, they downplayed making cars safer. 30 years after this movie was made, seat belts were still optional equipment, if they were offered at all. Shoulder straps were still not provided.
I got a new car last year and it is loaded with safety features that have helped me out where an accident might have occurred.
But there will always be jerks and road ragers. The safest car can't prevent them from ruining your day.
1000 times worse today . the Governor would flip his wig
Just goes to show speed and crazy driving is in the blood their kin are still out there today
well isn't this a fine song and dance? 🤔
Nothing's changed people still drive crazy
The fact 2 years later a far worse person emerges just doesn’t sit right with me
Have they legalized marijuana instead of alcohol, they have Slowpoke drivers everywhere that were simply hungry and wanted to get something to eat versus drunken Brave Daredevils. It would have been interesting to do a comparison one state everybody's drinking another state everybody smoking weed and at the end of the let's see which state had more car accidents. I guarantee you the state that legalized alcohol would have twice as many and more that would be fatalities. A stoned driver is a safer driver than a drunk driver. But the cat's out of the bag they legalized alcohol and they can't put it back in the bag.
If it were not for the advances in safety technology the death toll in 2024 would be 200,000 a year
Jersey all right.
we were supposed to be driving flying cars in the year 2025
Cars have changed plenty, but the drivers??? Not so much, really. More people survive now since the cars are built better and safer, with better brakes, tires, and handling, bodies with crumple zones, and passenger restraint systems. Not to mention turn signals.
they didn't even have cell phones.
Humans... enough said.
now MVC
Ban the can
Lol new jersey has best roads in America. Maybe in 1930. But that was the last time they fixed a pothole or did any improvements.
how does running a red light when no other is looking....how does that injure a person or society? It does one.
Making laws based on speculation does not
the comments are so funny thanks for the laffs guys
5:45 Or Voter cheating too.
Ummmm…..the New Jersey Turnpike didn’t come into existence until 1952…just sayin’
So these guys in the video think they are the authority on "bad habits"
Ummm, I guess nothing has really changed with human nature and aggressive driving except that cars are a tad safer if you wear your seatbelt.
Everything here is true....... watch the other guy !!!!
You can't fix stupid....
this is creepy old
Well u should see it now it worse 😂2024
Well its 2024 and the garbage state is worst then this judge seems to think so,cars amd trucks are smarter ,the people driving them are the dummys,ate can't fix stupid, just with a bench upside the head
Downvoted simply because I have no idea what you are saying. Is English your second language ?
Propaganda
Their is no such thing as an 'accident!!!
Yet you used 'their' for 'there'.