One of the all time most infamous of the highway safety scare film genre, HIGHWAY OF AGONY was made by Highway Safety Films of Mansfield, Ohio. This was the filmmaking arm of the Highway Safety Commission, an organization responsible for haunting the dreams of an entire generation of young drivers. In this era, when safety belts were not mandatory and air bags were yet a distant dream, and things like disc brakes and powered steering had yet to be widely adopted, America’s highways were the scene of daily carnage. Part of the problem, as you can see in the film, was the fact that the automobiles of the 1940s-60s were not built to survive accidents. Filled with white sheet covered corpses and bloodied, mangled survivors, and images of shattered steel and torn rubber, “Highway of Agony” remains a chilling reminder that speed and inattention — can kill.
While the film is full of various accident footage — all of it shockingly real — perhaps one of the worst in terms of damage appears at 20:00 where a Chevrolet Corvair is seen after a head-on collision. The car, which Ralph Nader singled out for its unsafe design in “Unsafe at Any Speed” — has completely disintegrated.
The film looks at various scenarios, including a focus on the effects of drinking and driving at (25:40). At 24:10 the film shows car vs. train, also not for the faint of heart.
The film ends with a terrifying dolly shot over a row of bodies on a highway…a line of bodies 50 miles long every year..and while you were watching the movie the line grew 15 feet.
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: “01:00:12:00 — President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference.”
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
