This color educational Traffic Safety film is about Seat Belt Safety starring Dick Van Dyke, and it’s called: “BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.” This was made in 1964.
Credit: Bell System (:06-:25). Screen reads: The Telephone company is pleased to make this motion picture available for showings as a pubic service. Southwestern Bell Film Library. Southwestern Bell (:26-:30). Many different parts, inside and outside of a convertible car are shown. It then speeds away. Down the street
(:31-1:27). A title card: “Before It’s Too Late” (1:28-1:31). Dick Van Dyke credit (1:32-1:36). A driver in a car. Shots of the coast, the water. Female driver on the freeway. Freeway shots, bridges, open fields, city shots. Many types of cars and trucks are shown (1:37-3:07). Car swerves, sounds of sires. A group of men working on demolished cars in a junkyard. Our narrator informs us that if you add up the populations of Mobile, Kansas City, Toronto, Miami and Des Moines that you will equal the amount of people hurt in car accidents in 12 months. 40,000 are killed every year and rising. Many factors cause this. 9 out of 10 accidents are driver error. If we want to curtail this – there is one thing that can help: the seat belt (3:08-4:56). Dick Van Dyke tells us seat belts save lives. Cars move around the LA freeway and in Hollywood. We see Dick drive. Most people are killed in accidents driving less than 40mph and close to home. Seat belts keep you safe and aren’t constricting. Lots of driving around Los Angeles streets. Dick explains why we need them and why it isn’t ‘sissy’ to wear them (4:57-7:33). Dick continues to drive. He explains why seat belts must be used. He explains how he was driving about 50mph and hit a concrete wall near UCLA. Luckily he survived even though the car flipped – the seat belt saved him (7:34-9:26). Actual collision tests conducted at UCLA are shown. They are shown in various angles. From outside to inside. In place of real people are dummies. After an accident is made to occur, the dummies are strewn about the pavement. They weren’t wearing seat belts and the carnage is apparent (9:27-11:36). People get into vehicles and put on their seat belts. Some NYC shots are shown. Radio DJ mentions seat belts. Driving along the coast
(11:37-13:26). Title card: The Bell System expresses appreciation to the University of CA, Los Angeles, Institute of Transportation and Traffic engineering, for the use of its film experiment on automobile collision (13:27-13:34). End credits (13:35-13:43).
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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
