This black-and-white film is a Sid Davis Production from 1954 made in cooperation with the Los Angeles Board of Education and the Los Angeles Police Department. Sid Davis produced many similar educational films during the 1950s and 60s. In this film, a teacher and a police officer teach a group of schoolchildren the safety practices when having to bicycle or cross streets, by demonstrating the distances it can take bicycles and cars to stop when considering their speed and the driver’s reaction time.
“You Can’t Stop on a Dime” title banner (00:24). School children are seated on rows of benches in a schoolyard to participate in a traffic safety class (00:43). A safety teacher introduces the class accompanied by a police officer (00:53). Children raise their hand to volunteer to assist the police officer in a demonstration (01:16). He selects two students (01:18). He gives the students instructions (01:37). One of the two students starts running when signaled to (01:51). He stops running at the sound of the whistle from the police officer (01:56). Two students measure the distance between the student’s position at the sound of the whistle and the position where he stopped (01:57). Then second students attempt the same experiment but walks instead of running (02:22). The distance between the position of the student and her position when the whistle sounded is measured (02:33). The safety teacher explains how speed affects the reaction time between hearing the whistle and fully stopping (02:45). Two students cross a street at an intersection, one running and one walking (02:54). Two students demonstrate the importance of waiting for a green light when crossing a street at an intersection (03:06). Two students are waiting to cross the road at an intersection (03:40). They demonstrate how to properly look to their sides before safely crossing the street (03:59). The reaction time between the sound of the whistle and the full stop is tested by two students riding bicycles (04:16). A student rides her bike in the street and manages to stop her bicycle before hiding a reversing car (06:25). The police officer is demonstrating the blind spots of an automobile to the students in the schoolyard (06:53). Two children wait to cross the road, knowing they are in a driver’s blind spot (08:14). School children demonstrate how to wait for a car to fully stop at every lane before crossing the street at an intersection (08:34). The police officer and a driver enter a car to demonstrate the time it takes the car to come to a full stop after the signal is given (09:11). “The End” on screen (10:40).
