When Classics Crash [Colorized]
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- Опубліковано 28 лип 2023
- Classic cars from the 1940s and 1950s are beautiful to look at, but what happened when they crashed?
In this video, we've got a collection of 38 vintage photos that show what actually happens when classic cars crash.
In the days before safety cages, seat belts, airbags, and impact-absorbing guardrails, your life was in your hands when you took to the undivided highways.
These photos show dented cars, crumpled cars, cars wrapped around poles, as well as some unfortunate and comical accidents where nothing was hurt but pride.
Thanks for watching!
Music: Intractable by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/...
#nostalgia #classiccars #lifeinamerica - Розваги
![Crash Chronicles 2 [Colorized]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Tlvl8fXuuVg/mqdefault.jpg)
![Crash Chronicles 2 [Colorized]](/img/tr.png)
I can remember in high school I found a book in the library that showed pictures of accidents, what caused them, and of what happened to the passengers. Once I started driving, I wore seatbelts before they became law as many of the photos were people thrown out of the car only to be crushed by the car or tossed into traffic like rag dolls.
I can remember some of my family members angry with me because I refused to put the car in gear until everyone had put on their seat belt. And if they took it off afterwards, I just pulled over and stopped. My philosophy was: My car, my rules. If you don't like it, walk.
It's been many years, but I would not be surprised if some of these pictures were in that book.
Great rule to have. I never started wearing seatbelts until I saw those videos in driver's ed. Then, my whole family started using them.
Same ♥️🇬🇧👍 I learned to drive in an old Mini van at age 14 in fields and orchard. In 1977 I started driving on roads with a license. Before it became legal requirement to wear seat belt is was mandatory in my car . No belt 🤔 Walk . Only took me 2 days aged 14 to belt in as tight as possible in that van and have ever since.
Grandaugter went through short phase of unbuckling whilst travelling. Aborted day out and no speak grandad stopped that after 2 times .
Thank you again Volvo 💕 also my 144 was 1,400 kg of go cart driving fun ♥️🇬🇧💖👍
Seat belts do make sense, so good for you…. I’m glad you didn’t view that book as pornography and ‘use’ it.. If you did it’s highly unlikely you would be commenting.
@@johneeeemarry34 I'm not sure how a book on automobile accidents can be linked with pornography. There's no relationship between the two subjects whatsoever. Really scratching my head here...
@@paparoysworkshop
Yeah, fr.. 🤦♀️
Volvo designer present seat belt configurations did not patent so all manufacturers could install for safety . Saved millions of lives . Respect ❤️👍
That Greyhound crash- I worked with a guy who was a Greyhound crash investigator for North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. He told me about a wreck he had to go photograph and write a report on at 4AM. A piece of construction equipment, a crane arm or similar had came unfastened and swung out over the highway. The bus ran into it. The arm was the perfect height to sardine can the bus and decapitate most of the passengers. Some from the chest up, some partially torn in half. The driver was killed instantly and his seat was ripped from the floorboard. Out of 15 people only a couple of kids and a guy taking a dump in the rear of the bus survived. They had to extract the guy on the toilet but covered his head with a sheet as to not see the carnage as they walked him to the front. He said he retired after that. That was the last one. It gave him nightmares.
what year?
💜💜💜💜
Buses are death traps. They are built like egg shells with zero thought given to any safety features. In any kind of crash the body disintegrates and the passengers go flying. Bus companies and manufacturers must pay big bribes to government regulators to even be allowed on the road.
@@Dustin_McPredridge This would have had to been the late 70's early 80's. He didnt say. But I know he bought and ran a night club after that from 1983-1990.
Bet the guy having a dump had really good clear out !
At the age of 15, my older sister was killed in a car wreck, along with her boyfriend and another couple. It was 1959. The car was a 57 Renault with the motor in the back. They hit a tree, the front of the car having been wrapped around the tree stopped at the back seat. The car was still running when rescue arrived. In those days, none of us kids were allowed to go to the wakes or funerals. No one would be so ill bed as to mention your dead. Saw pictures of the wrecked car, but had so many unanswered questions about my sister. Pretty much wrecked my early life. They handle things much better now.
Sorry for your tragic loss. Those were terrible times to be in a car wreck.
A Dauphine. I know the vehicles. Someone could get killed in one hitting a garbage can. At 25mph. They didn’t go much faster than that. 0-50mph in 24 hours.
@@AdamWaffen The French gave us a Machine Gun "the potato digger" that was more likely to injure its' operator (Okay...that was in the First World War.) Then, there was the "Impenetrable" Maginot Line, and the Citroen. It sounds like the Dauphine was at Least as Bad.
What a Bunch of Inspector Clousseaus!
(HE admittedly was Fictional, and Brilliantly played by the Late Great British Actor Peter Sellers.)
Having lived in the suburbs as a kid, my Dad would take us to see wrecked cars and give us a
lecture on safe driving. But it was the windshields, cracked by the driver's head, or the likely
impalement from a steering column, and the dried blood, that stands out in my memory.
I also heard about the rod for the rear view mirror and hatch for the glove compartment both in metal would function like a spear and a slicer like seen in 2:34
@@samuelattas3864 😳 yeah that pictures tells a thousand words, gawd damm that mustve hurt!! if they felt it at all!
@@jessebrown1400 -An accident like this one killed my cousin some 50 years ago. She wasn't impaled but the column knocked her in the chest and snapped her head back. We went to the junk yard to see for ourselves and like you said I noticed the blood splatters as well. Very sad. Definitely left an impression on my young self.
Do you remember Ernie Kovacs? He was a wonderful comic genius who died in 1962 when his Corvair slid on wet streets in Beverly Hills and wrapped around a telephone pole. It caved in his driver's side door.. He inspired comedians for decades after. He was married to Edie Adams. People said the design was unsafe, but it was deemed to be as safe as other cars at that time. That isn't saying a lot, considering how unsafe cars were back then. No headrests to keep from breaking your neck, no air bags, no crumple technology. It was pretty unsafe.
@velvetbees
And seat belts. The automotive industry almost had a stroke when they were forced to finally put seat belts in as standard. I remember reading in a newspaper that Detroit said it was going to bankrupt the automotive industry. F****** asshats❗❗⚡
The Ohio State Highway Patrol used to film the accidents right after they happened to include the human carnage These were shown to our drivers ed classes in the 50's. Really made an impression.
ua-cam.com/video/qOpgDCopWW0/v-deo.html
Signal 30. I saw them in high school in Ohio as well, in 1976. It's here on YT.
@@StewieGriffin505 I saw it in 1981.
I think I saw it. Blood on the highway if I remember was the title 😂
70s. Too
My granddad worked security in the Air Force in the mid to late 50's. One of his duties was to document accidents. When he died, we found quite a few old photos he had taken of mangled wrecks that he had stashed back.
I loved the way people dressed back in those days always classy men with hats no tattoos and clean shaven 😊
I'm thankful I live in a time where I can wear whatever I wish
The only thing with wearing layers is bad oder,all tho people dress with less layers and still smell bad.🤪
And not one purple haired weirdo to be seen or anybody staring at a dumb phone.
@@yeoldeseawitch Of course you are. How horrible it would be if you actually had to make an effort.
you mean wearing pajamas and slippers to Sprawlmart isnt classy? 😉🙃
I like old cars, but when i see a destroyed old car, it just breaks my heart.
1:33 You look at how that steering wheel was bent up like that and you have to know a persons chest did that. No seat belt, nothing to stop forward progress except your sternum against a metal shaft. My mom died in a 1960 Chevy Impala, no seat belt, 35 mph impact into a car that pulled out in front of her. The chrome horn ring broke as she hit the steering wheel, went through her chest, her heart and right lung, and out her back. She died within seconds, and my 20 year old older sister watched her bleed out. This was in 1967, just before my sister died of cancer in 1987 she said she was happy to be dying so soon in her life she she wouldn't be tormented by the image anymore.
This brought tears to my eyes. Your mom and sister are at peace, but I am very sorry for what your family had to endure.
So sorry for you to lose your Mom that way, Peace of Christ.
The 1960 Impala is horrible in crashes with its really weak frame even compared to other cars of the era sadly
As a kid riding in the back bench seat of my parents Ford Galaxy 500 I can very clearly recall the many horrific accidents we’d pass by driving along I-80 in Ca. Bias ply tires, loose steering and no seatbelts. Even a minor crash could kill.
People today don't realize how easy it was to out run your headlights back then. Pre 60's cars has way more bounce on the front end and the lights bobbed into the trees, not what you want to have in foggy wet situations... Even back then people would park under trees, have nasty windshields and not be able to see once they hit the road and it started to rain.
I feel vindicated in having a 50 year old Volvo for a classic car. Decent damping, 8" Bosch headlamps, 3 point inertia reel seatbelts, collapsible steering column, safety cage with crumble zones, side impact bars in the doors, laminated screen/windshield. A small sacrific in style is worth it for even basic safety features.
@@idonotwantahandle2 Yes the venerable Volvo is pretty tough as are the old Saab’s, but I don’t recall them as very reliable. My wife, a Cal farm girl hippy had Volvo wagons that came into our marriage. I even overhauled one of the 4 cyl versions. Had carb issues always. I like the reliability of the new cars and they’re great handling. We’ve owned Toyota’s. Buyem, driveem never a mechanical issue. Run like sewing machines.
@@dustdevilz4771 I have driven Toyota Hilux utes in Australia for close to forty years and have never had a problem. It's the best decision i ever made. The things just keep going.
@@kramnull8962yeah I’ve done all that. Grew up poor so my cars have been 30-40 years older than me, just gotta know how to drive proper and what to do/not to do in dire situations.
We love the styling of the old cars, but gotta love the technological improvements of the newer ones, including safety.
I agree!
My buddies grandparents have a '57 Chevy Belair. It's so cool and really fun to ride around in. I have to admit though, I'm always on edge knowing that even in a minor, low speed accident, I could wind up with some gnarly injuries.
Eh it's not that bad especially with minor accidents
as long as you're not stupid, everyone else should be more concerned about crashing into you. Modern cars are made of lesbian paper and environmentally friendly farts. The "safety features" are just compensating for everything they removed. No airbags or crumple zones are going to save you from crashing into a wall or wrapping around a pole at 100mph, but a heavy car will accelerate less when a lighter car hits it. And isn't acceleration the primary metric they use in crash tests?
One of the more significant safe designs in newer cars is the collapsing steering column. Look at those old one-piece columns, often driven right into the driver's chest or chin, then twisted up when the front of the car was crushed. The early 1960s high school driver ed movie "Signal 30", from Ohio State Patrol's accident scene cameras, showed these gruesome accidents and included audio of people screaming in pain: Still unforgettable these 50 years later.
Yes - and the picture at 2:34 shows exactly what you're saying. The front of the car was crushed, and the steering column shot straight up to the ceiling of the car. Can't imagine what that would have been like for a driver with no seatbelt.
@@TheHistoryLoungeGood point and one of the advances in safety drivers can't self defeat like, abs airbags or seat belts.
Other related accident scene films besides "Signal 30" are: "Wheels of Tragedy," "Mechanized Death," and "Red Asphalt." "Wheels of Tragedy" had some acting in it leading up to wrecks, but the accident scenes are real. Another one I saw was "Blood on the Windscreen," but that one had the blood dramatized.
And yet they keep producing dumber and dumber drivers…
@@TheHistoryLounge Yep. No real ambulances, no "Jaws of Life", Lifeflights, nothing. You were lucky if they could find a doctor to come out and amputate your leg in the field. Otherwise they might try to use two wrecker winches to pull it apart with you fully aware (no morphine either). Good times, huh?
2:22 -- the fried chicken ended up on the floor because there wasn't a bucket seat.
"Dad the seat belt is jabbing me in my back and dad would say "just shove it down into the seat."Things we would say in the 70's.
Well I'm off for a spin in my 1965 Pontiac hardtop coupe ................ Wish me luck !
Me to 67 catatina 2 door ht massive car but I feel safe
@@raymondkunkel9615 Catalina , the sister to my "B"body Parisienne custom sport .
Ahh the good old days when, if you didn't get thrown out of the car through the windshield, you'd find a steering wheel embedded in your chest.
Something to take notice of in old pictures is how well dressed and well groomed people were back in the day. Also how thin most people were.
I love how in some wrecks, people gather to pose with it. Cars may be safer today but the old cars could withstand a minor fender bender what with metal bumpers. Today if you bump into something with a newer car, you'll have the plastic bumper or entire fascia hanging off and an expensive repair bill. Great video.
"Cars were made like tanks back then!"
Yeah, but that didn't matter when all the other cars on the road were equally heavy, and there was no thought about securing the people inside same.
Yeah, but it was all mild steel back then with no reinforcement anywhere. So with even a minor hit, the car would collapse at the A pillar and everything forward would move into the cabin.
Agreed. I know ill take a old car over any of these new cars today. I feel so much safer in the older cars
@@jimmcdonald7758 well you haven't looked at the old cars in crash tests. Mild steel with no reinforcement. You're not safer but exposed.
@@Mcfreddo i have seen the videos. i also been in bad accidents in older cars and ill still take a older car over any newer car everytime.
I mean they didn’t ban the imperial from destruction derby for nothing 😆
Probably the most dangerous thing we do on a regular basis that's taken for granted is driving. You just never know if you'll come back after you leave the house. But life is too short to live in fear.
Well said.
My Dad had a tow-truck business in the 60’s -70’s and a yard full of wrecks. The steering wheels were usually bent by the driver’s chest and the windscreen broken by the driver’s head. It takes a lot of force to do that and they’d typically be in bad shape or dead after relatively low speed crashes. What a waste!
If you had purchased a 1957 Volvo Amazon (120 series) you would have been protected by 3 point safety belts, a collapsible steering column, padded dash, crumple zones, motor mounts designed to shear off and send the engine under the floor board instead of through the firewall, and a roll bar integrated into the roof. Front disc brakes became standard equipment in 1961. Citroen, Rover, Saab and Mercedes Benz were also early adopters of safety features. Ford made an effort in the mid 50's, but gave up before too long. I think their marketing department killed it off.
Interesting!
Back in ‘57 there were a few foreign cars in my hometown (Southern California). However, back then, there were no Saab or MG or Volvo dealers nearby. Los Angeles was about 15 miles away from us, but not many of those dealers were around there either. True, the imports were quite safe and economical. But safety and economy were not paramount selling points then. For styling look at a 57 Volvo then a 57 Ford Fairlane or a 57 Buick Century. Like it or not, style and color were huge influences on the buyers then. History has proven that the imports were a better idea but looking at it from a 1957 perspective, the American car was still king, at least for a few more years.
@@TheHistoryLounge Certainly is interesting, Fords 1955-57 "lifeguard" safety package was prompted and introduced by Robert McNamara.
Henry Ford II hated the idea and had it killed, because marketing safety was seen as suggesting that cars could be dangerous! Who knew? So in 1961 McNamara resigned from Ford and excepted the job offer of Secretary of Defence from JFK.
wmthe5th: That shows how far ahead the Scandinavians were in safety.! I remember looking at a 1967 Volvo & how the seat moulded to your body so much better than most of our t slide all over the place bench seats!
@@pommunist Henry Ford II also thought it was not a seller in terms of safety as most people chose not to buy the optional lap belts.
These pics is what I’m always trying to explain to people when they say “they don’t make ‘em like the used to”. Cars are much safer now and yes they get destroyed and may even look worse sometimes but they save a lot more lives then they used to. I grew up in my family’s business of an auto shop including collision/body paint that also did most of the towing and recoveries including major accidents in this area. I’ve seen the progression of vehicle safety from witnessing what happens to vehicles in person. These pics are very much a representation of how much the safety evolved.
one thing not seen in comments is that many of these accidents were at significantly slower speeds then of today. Having spent over a decade responding to accidents in the 70's & 80's one feels for the people injured back then. Sometimes the extrication caused more injuries than the original accident. In high school early 60's we were shown the movie "signal 30". One thing that will never change is the amount of blood found even on minor head injuries. (capilaries). Only puzzle I have is with all the todo with driving with cell phones, and to see people driving with dogs on their lap, it 😎 is still insane!
Took way longer for help to respond back then. Also the roads didn't have as many guardrails for low lying areas of the shoulders, so many ended up in gullies and deep ravines, perhaps the drink....
Driving cars isn't safer now than during the 1970's; while per passenger mile has dropped significantly, the per mile and the per capita has stayed about the same or increased slightly. For pedestrians and bicyclists, it's more dangerous now than ever (about 1/4 of vehicle deaths are pedestrians/bicyclists). We're just driving a lot more than ever, about 3 or 4 times more, as so many people commute daily from the suburbs. And with the introduction of megacars that hit other's around the window area instead of around the metal belt of the car, and run over pedestrians instead of scooping them above the hood, it's no surprise that pedestrian deaths have doubled over the past ten years.
The white, 59 Buick looked good before and even after the accident. The 59 Buick was a beautiful car in the year when "fins" dominated the car industry.
...as if it gracefully flew up to the guardrail like a white swan !
Great photos even though I’ve seen a few of them before.
However that smooth old school soundtrack rode me through the entire video and still wanted more. Well done!
I was waiting for a real Homer Simpson to appear in a picture listening to that smooth track.
Hey, @ManBoo55 - Thanks for your kind words, I'm glad you liked the video. Some of the commenters are hating on the music, but I agree with you - I think it fits well with the video.
I love how vintage cars seems bulky and massive but are in fact way more fragile than modern cars
Yeah they fold up like a paper bag!
Ya all dont know what yer talkin bout
These cars are tin cans. Even a modern VW Golf would rip them into pieces in a collision. Google classic car accidents. Always ends worse for the classic car driver.@@RoadkillXoutlaw
@@RoadkillXoutlaware I think there talking about what they see in the videos of the crashed crushed cars
The cars from the 30s, 40s onwards have actually very thick sheet metal skin and the chassis also is very strong. Where those cars lack is force absorbtion and programmed deformation, although some cars from the video deformed in a nice, uniform way. There is a crash here on YT between an 60s Cadillac and a much newer Cadillac DTS. And both cars deformed similarly, although the old Caddy didn't protect the occupants very well.
Growing up in the 1950's I saw many accidents. And while it may look to people today that these cars couldn't move very fast, I'm here to tell you that they could all easily go close to a 100mph. And what I remember most was the amount of blood after a crash. No protection at all and nothing but sharp metal designed for the times. They were insanely fun to drive unlike cars of today. Had a 1949 Ford V8 that was a beast. You popped the clutch, and it was a rocket. And if it hit anything you were going to get shredded to pieces.
you picked my favorite music to put with these photos! It fits the time perfectly and I thank you very much and God bless you
Very interesting collection of colour photographs from the 40s-50s (with a few B&W thrown in) thanks for uploading them!
As long as manufacturers keep on making cars the public will keep on crashing em.
driving, n roads aren't any safer today. same amount of fatalities n crashes
today, as there was back then, even with "safer" cars. no changes. remains constant.
The colorization of these vids are horrendous
That first crash with the car that drove through the store reminded me of the early 90’s.
I plowed roads all my life in dump trucks but we had some smaller vehicles.
A guy Frank was doing small sections in a small ARMY type jeep and tried to make things easier for a sidewalk shoveling crew when he drove through a corner shoe store.
Glass, bricks and sneakers all over the joint.
Cars, when in a wreck make the stupidest "BANG!" sound. When I was 8 yrs. old, my best friend and I were playing in his back yard & heard screeching tires, then that sound that's on some 60s song. I mean you could hear the metal crunch & bend! This old lady (40 or so!) fainted or whatever old ladies do & hit a telephone pole. She was out like a light! People opened her door & she fell out like she was liquid. They took her to a house by the wreck (back then, you just offered you home, hot water bottle or cold compress regardless of if you knew the injured person. You just did stuff like that) not even considering any neck or back injuries. We didn't have 9-1-1 or probably even an ambulance service. I forget what happened to her, we got shood out of the house. She could still be on that couch for all I know!
Yes, she's still there. She's too stiff to move...
When I look at that cars - what severe injuries the drivers must suffered
Absolutely.
They'd be dead. No seatbelts in those days.
out of all the pictures 90-95% car accidents were fatal
I am not by any means a fainthearted person, but this type of crouch injuries where pieces went up and makes carange of what's bewtween ones legs and lower abdomen alwas made med shiver to the bones just by thinking about it. I remeber from my old books there was once an early seatbelt experiment with a strap for the upperbody alone, i can't remember which manufacturer did put it to use, the ideas was that to prevent the drivers head from smashing into the panel, but the thing was that it made the lowerbody to slide forward instead and they had to take it out of production because of the horrifying injuries that caused in a high speed collision. I think actualy Volvo was first to introduce the new 3 point belt for regular non race track cars and it was a massive sucess, easy to use and kept the whole body in place, they also did introduce the new padded instrument panel which had a foam layer to protect the drivers head, today basically all cars has that.
There's a photo book titled "Crash" which shows similar photos of 1950s and 1960s crashed vehicles with the dead people still sitting inside. The book was in my local bookshop for quite some time.
As I remember, this book is actually called "Car Crashes And Other Sad Stories", and the photos are from the 1940s and '50s. I own a copy of it. All the pictures were taken in California by one particular commercial photographer.
@@hebneh
?.Where can i find the book
@@hebneh People didn't realize how widespread the mahem was. Most only knew the wrecks were happening rapidly in their own area or state.
Many people had many shoe boxes full of these crashes in their closets.
So many new drivers and so little attention paid to safety and precautions.
@@kramnull8962 Actually, there was a lot of national and local publicity of vehicle crashes and deaths. One of my strong memories as a kid in the 1960s was news about the number of national traffic deaths every long holiday weekend, with the worst single incident with the most fatalities being singled out, wherever it had happened.
@@hebneh Well of course, when they are looking for tax money.
Makes me a little sick knowing that some of these were surely fatal crashes. 2:34 The steering column bent straight up, the smashed window, blood on the seat and the driver's shoe present an awful picture. And that poor little girl being lifted down from the overturned car. Horrible.
That scene @ 2:34 was indeed a harrowing one. Just imagine the horror felt by the first responders who went to the wreck site and witnessed it live.
My late mother worked as a nurse from the 50s onwards. It was the car crash victims that ended up putting her off driving by the 60s 😞.
Takes little to wonder why there are so few of them around.
I had an older friend that had shoe boxes of black and white pictures like these. It happened all across the US back then. Narrow to No roads and really trees falling everywhere. They were unprepared for the venture they took making roads, as fast as possible.
To look back on how much this guy liked to drink and drive, and the number of people he killed, he was a serial killer.
"first responders" ambulance drivers, police, and tow truck drivers. What is it with that stupid phrase of fIRst rEspondErs. @@danielestrada1850
That 59 (?) white Buick, was my first car. $50.00. In 1960's money. Beat-up and suffered from rust. Learned alot about cars and loved working on this land barge. Had it for at least 3 years.
the backing track is super chill!
Sad to see all those nice old cars wrecked.
But they were nice new cars then.
It would make you sick to see the numbers that were trashed that looked perfectly fine. I would figure, if any were sitting around in 42-45 they were scrapped, or it seems like those cars would have been, recycled for the war effort.
@@kramnull8962 Scrap metal drives were a big thing during the war, and most non-running vehicles fell to that fate. Cars which seriously broke down were scrapped if parts couldn't be found to fix them as no new parts were being made. With gas rationing, even perfectly good cars that weren't efficient got scrapped. The main reason so many "Model T's" exist now is that they sipped gas compared to later cars, could run on many burnable liquids other than gas, and could be patched together without necessarily needing specific new parts by the average owner or local handyman' thus surviving where many "better" cars did not.
Frightening photos of yesteryear. Being somewhat elderly recall seeing accidents or aftermath of them that folks either died or had major injuries. I recall seeing the 1964 Pontiac Grand Prix I had owned in a junkyard. The engine was almost fully under the front seat and the steering column was jammed almost straight up. The drivers shoes were still in the car and full of gore as was the seat. Interesting was that the front fenders had almost no damage as he hit a tree dead(!) center.
When I was a kid back in the early '60s my buddies and I would race to the local towing yard whenever they hauled in a new wreck, always hoping to see some blood, tissue or other evidence left behind. I remember a '63 split window corvette which had hit a pole sideways at over 100 mph and literally cut in half. They used plastic in the windshields back then and we saw one where you could make out the image of a guy's face in the plastic sheet when he went face-first into the windshield. We were morbid little squirts.
What size were the shoes? Can you get your hands on them still?
If I had to listen to that background music while driving, I'd hit something too!
I just like looking at the classics. Great content! 😊
Thanks!
Incredible in retrospect. I used to have a 1952 Nash. The center of the horn button came to a near point, about the radius of a golf ball. I called it the "cardiac arrestor". I drove that car differently than my modern cars. 😳
I have a 72 Corvette with lap belts and the same kind of deadly steering wheel. I drive it as if I were on a motorcycle.
@@1972Ray 😂😂
The 37 Ford (1:10) that looked like a tree had fallen on it would not have fared any better if it had a "safety cage" no car would hold up to a big tree falling on it.
My grandfather had a 1959 Desoto in the 1970s. He was coming over to my parents house when he ran a stop sign and some someone t-boned the Desoto. Turned out that there was supposed to be a stop sign but someone stole it and my grandfather didn’t realize it. After that my grandfather was never the same and stopped driving. Later that year he had a stroke. The car was totaled.
There have been several demonstrations of crashing a car from the 1950's into a modern car. It is quite clear the occupant of the 50's vehicle would have been severely injured or killed while the occupant of the modern vehicle would have been much safer.
It’s not entirely the fault of the vehicle makers solely , that by todays standards poor brakes and tires yes played a part then you have the road side hazards , poorly planned and lighted roads. Lack of markers and crash barriers must also have add to the tolls , just to name a few.
Drinking and drive was I believe more common.
In 1956 when Ford introduced seat belts, padded dash and collapsible steering wheel, people said the cars must be unsafe. Why would they install that stuff? This was when it was believed you were safer being thrown through the windshield in a crash. Didn’t want to be trapped in a burning car. Also the driver would be impaled on the steering column in a head on crash. No seatbelts or collapsible steering.
Ah the good old days.
I love Tuckers, and the entire Tucker story, but one of the most crazy ideas ever was that they built them with a "hole" for the front passenger to pounce into just before an inevitable crash. If the passenger was lucky enough to figure that out and act on it in time, then they'd just be squished or broken up under there anyway. I can't believe they thought that was a good idea. It would probably have worked well in impacts under 1.5 mph, lol.
@@smartysmarty1714 I remember reading magazine articles and road tests by Tom McCahill back in the 59s-60s and he was always talking about "diving for the basement" in the event of a crash or roll-over. The idea was that you would jump down on the floor and tuck yourself up under the dashboard where you'd be safe. Seatbelts were a safety hazard because they would prevent you from doing that. I recall that he once rolled a Renault while road testing it and attributed his survival to that trick. I tend to think that he was just thrown into that area because as usual he wasn't wearing the seat belt in the car. But, hey, feel free to believe whatever silly nonsense you want to believe. I guess maybe if you had the reflexes and reaction time of a mongoose it might work? He also had a fetish about parking brake levers being accessible to the passengers, and would refuse to ride in any car where it wasn't. Apparently drivers dying behind the wheel while driving was a big problem back then and the idea was that the passenger could use the parking brake to stop the car.
@@barryervin8536 I followed Uncle Tom in Mechanix Illustrated all through the '50s and into the '60s. Love him or hate him, he was a character! And thousands loved him.
I always read him first of all when the magazine arrived.
I recall one car which had no drain in the trunk, which was unacceptable to Uncle Tom. What if your jug of ice tea turned over in the trunk and emptied? So he pulled out a .45, shot a hole in the trunk floor and stuck a cork in it. Problem solved!
Also he liked to test the trunk capacity on every car by having his large assistant lie in it, or he would get in himself, and he was no lightweight, either. They'd better fit, too, or the car was woefully lacking in the storage category.
He hated wrap-around windshields as a frivolous expense, or even dangerous. The list goes on and on. Thanks for reviving long-forgotten memories.
@@MrTruckerf Oh, he was a charismatic folk hero for sure, but when it came down to being an "expert" in anything he was a legend in his own mind. I was about 10-12 years old when reading his stories and I could tell that he was a stranger to logic and physics.
@@barryervin8536 It was mostly hype and BS, but it was entertaining hype and BS.
I graduated HS in 91', so Drivers Ed was 88'-89' in school. The videos we watched showed everything about the crash. It was basically full on Faces of Death if you remember those videos. It was gruesome but you watched in a weird fascination. It got the point across. Can't even imagine what Disney movie they are using to teach Drivers Ed now.
maybe they watch Suzy The Blue Coupe?
In the clip at 7:22 you can almost hear the guy in the background saying “ I’ll walk the rest of the way “ , great pictures .
When cars were strong and sturdy... and people were crumple zones.
lmao you caught me there at the first half
I only drive two cars. A 1964 and a 1977 MGB. They are both the same in terms of crash-worthiness. I have to admit, if I were involved in a crash, I'd probably be severly injured at the very least. Having said that, I drive as carefully as I can and keep my head on a swivel and moreso with a passenger. They are small enough as it is and people dont see you. Best wishes, everyone.
I have 66 GT and the only safety feature is a thin pad at the top of the dash. 77 B's would have collapsible steering columns and the famous rubber bumpers😂
@@paulwayman4579I do feel a bit safer in general with the '77. It has three-point harnesses, headrests and the fully-padded dash along with the raised ride height and rubber bumpers. The '64 has a lap belt and literally nothing else.
@@ericcriteser4001 Well, the MG B was engineered to withstand a 30mph head on crash which was really something for its time, but it is a very outdated minimum nowadays...
A 1977 MGB?? We had one. It needed hourly maintenance. Worst piece of crap ever.
I drive a 1937 Plymouth and agree with you. It's your job to keep your distance and be ever watchful. BTW I have NO seatbelts!
How fantastic is that Music - Cool Skool doesnt even cut it !
This is amazing.
I was a kid in the '60s, when almost any kind of accident involved serious injury in cars from the late 50s into the mid-'60s. No seatbelts, dashboards designed to penetrate chests and skulls, steering columns that pierced hearts. passenger cabins that completely crumpled on impact. I'm glad my Dad was a good driver, since we had no belts, car seats, and my Mom carried us on her lap on drives in the '56 Olds Rocket 88.
Remember laying on the ledge in the rear window in the 60's and 70's cars?
@@johnstudd4245 Definitely! haha
Darwin at work. Good drivers durvived, bad ones didn't
Ah, yes, steel dashboards. The joke was that after an accident you could just hose them off and they’d be good as new!
A/C wasn't a thing for us until we got a '70 Pontiac Catalina. I remember cruising in our '54 Chevy with 3-on-the-tree on a hot summer day with the windows down and us kids halfway out the windows.
I drive a car from the 1930's, slowly and mostly on multi lane roads as they are the safest. Many of these crashes will be down to speed. However if you think you'll walk away from a modern car that crashes at 70, think again.
nonsense , in a modern car , you have a greater chance of walking away from a crash at those speeds . Older cars were death traps . No fault of their own though , it just wasn't their time and safety wasn't much of a concern back then.
agree. in a modern "safe" car, n get nailed by a supersize truck, and/ or
oversize suv - sav - suburban assault vehicle, it's over, no matter how "safe" it is.
it sure can, i crashed a BMW E39 in late 1998, was with 65 mph. Not a scratch.
E39 is not an average car, though. Try that same wreck in some kid's ten year old mazda3...
@@onlythefarmer current kids can buy them for cheap.
VERY COOL!
FASCINATING HISTORY!
Thankyou ~
Back in the mid-1970s, I saw a car that had wrapped itself around a utility pole; the tow truck was carrying it suspended on its cable with the pole having been cut off above and below the car, but still wrapped around it.
I cannot believe how many of those wrecks appear to be running on slicks! Might explain a lot of the prangs.
Part of driver education course in school (free 1968) we were required to watch a movie titled “signal 30” sort of similar but more graphic mangled bodies, and blood, etc., were included certainly slowed us down for awhile.
I saw Signal 30, in fact all the guys were looking forward to it. Afterwards YUK!
6:34. Trailer king pins and plates today are nowhere near that strong. WOW.😲
Love this stuff from early 50s
So many locally owned shops, no national franchises.
And they are ALL Americans ....
what caught my eye was how nice people dressed
Great video. Yes, vehicles can have all the advantages of safety features now compared to then but when you have distracted, drunk, racing, etc. Drivers operating these vehicles now they cause it to be as dangerous as it ever was. 😮
No, not even close. Deaths per passenger distance are much lower than they used to be.
Very cool video ,got a like from me
A common problem of the 50's and earlier, and on Chrysler products through the 80's, was doors flying open on curves. I went flying out a couple of times as a kid - got some great road rash scars.
Nice fan fiction. Wanna tell us more?
Dad had a 70 Dodge charger I was flying out onto the pavement twice😅
@@Calc_Ulatoryou obviously know Jack about automotive history 🤡
I saw in an interview with Burt Ward (Robin from the original Batman series) stating that he'd nearly been ejected while filming the opening scene where the Batmobile sped out of the bat cave. He was barely able to hold on. Just goes to show that even the venerable Batmobile was not immune to such malfunctions back in those days.
My dad was driving through an intersection in Cleveland Ohio in the 1950s and got T-boned by a guy that blew a red light. They say my dad was never the same after that. He was ejected from the car and split his head open on the curb. He was always bitter about how the guy had Allstate Insurance and they didn't want to pay. About 5 or 10 years later my dad married my mom but she didn't know what she was getting herself into because the brain injury caused my dad to have fits of Rage and other Strange Behaviors. After my mom died I took my dad to the VA and had them do a full psychological workup on him, they x-rayed his head and the doctor told me there was an atrophied portion of his brain on the top of his head which is where he hit the curb. It's like the butterfly effect, one moments inattention while driving through an intersection has reverberated for decades and changed so many lives.
Very similar type of accident happened to a close family friends father and it's very sadm
Back in the days when, on a per capita basis, you were twice as likely to die in a car crash than today.
True. However you are twice as likely to be in a car crash today due to driver's inattentiveness.
Back in the day, you were more likely to die of heart disease then a car crash.
We were so careless and reckless with a side of gravy and don't skimp on the gravy kind of generation.
Now days you are twice as likely to die while dieing.
@@bigonaka8159 Don't be talking about how people ate, when 3 decades the government saturated the US in DDT from the farmlands to the cities, and blew powder in kids faces for lice and to kill mosquitoes....... Asbestos did less damage than our government.
Usualy at least where i live the avewrage speed where much lower compared to today, if one has been driving on the rural side on very old roads one quickly does understand why 50km/h /25/mph where concidered much, today 120-130 km/h or 60-70/mph (In Sweden 110km/h) is concidered pretty normal speed on larger roads, that is almost 3x the average road speed in the 1950s. It is amazing that people does survive at all from a crach in that speed even in a modern car to be honest, it says a lot of how incredible the human body actualy is and mother natures ability to heal as some people still will be capable of walk and get back to life. One shall really be thankful for that and not take anytihing in life for granted, those things does happen in fractions of a second.
These days you're more likely to die from a drunk driver or a person on their phone operating a motor vehicle less distractions back then than now
Love the tunes Man.
The head injuries were massive. A lot of those people ended up in homes, unable to care for themselves, etc. I remember those cars were like metal cages. Shred you to pieces. 😞
gotta love those old cars. they saved my life acouple time in accidents
Vehicles back then had a few safety features but not many. Door locks, headlights, brake lights, better tires, dual windshield wipers (most cars & trucks had only one - for the driver). People didn’t drive as fast, there were fewer vehicles on the road and some people only drove on weekends (they took the streetcar or bus to work).
On the other hand, dashboards were steel, no seat belts, steering columns didn’t retract, tires were narrower than today, cars steered differently and there were no power brakes or power steering (later on more expensive cars but not the average car since those were either nonexistent or far too expensive for the average buyer), air conditioning was a $500.00 option and only a few cars came with defrosters (you wiped off the condensation with a towel). Heaven help you if your brakes got wet, they faded.
Driving, up till the early sixties was a handful. Imagine parallel parking or having to react quickly in an emergency situation.
I've driven some old trucks without power steering, but never without power brakes. I can't imagine dealing with the scenarios you mentioned - parallel parking or evasive driving without both of those modern features.
According to U.S. Federal highway statistics, you were twice as likely to die in an automobile accident in 1946 than in one today.
There's a saying here in Mexico that translates into something like "you can get used to pretty much anything except no to eat". I say it because I learned to drive about 26 years ago on a '67 Valiant with drum non-power brakes, stick shift, waist-only seat belts and manual steering and even though I've had several new cars through the years, I still have and frequently drive that car both in town and out on the highway too and it's really not that frightening at all. It all depends on how safely one drives. Never had a wreck and still not planning on having one.
@@danielestrada1850 Yes, you take care of it and it will take care of you.
I own and drive a 65 Ford Thunderbird. That was the first year for power brakes on a Thunderbird.
The 67 Valiant sold relatively well. It was good, basic transportation. The size of the car was what a lot of people wanted and you could buy a few options to make it even better.
Not near as deadly as when an idiot face-fing their phone, encounters another idiot face-fing theirs in a crosswalk…
Love the music.
Loved the background music
2:33 Wow, the impact has pushed the firewall back into the cabin so that's there's almost no room between it and the front of the seat. And that steering column! Modern cars have no character at all, but at least they don't collapse around us in a crash.
Yeah - that picture is a scary one, and shows all too clearly what would've happened.
Good, go buy a new car and shut up.
The ends are designed to crush to absorb the impact energy while the passenger compartment stays intact with the passengers restrained inside. Or at least, that's the idea, and it works pretty well in most accidents. The car might be destroyed but the occupants are safer. Cars can be replaced
@@barryervin8536 The problem now is that cars are not economically repairable after lower impact crashes which would have not badly damaged older cars. Many cars are written off after air-bag deployment because of replacement expense. The end effect of this is that it is becoming so expensive to own and insure a car that the average person can barely afford it. Nobody wants unsafe cars, but I'd rather have an older car which will last that is relatively safe if I drive carefully than a car which only drives me broke.
@@P_RO_ True, but no matter how carefully you drive you can always be hit by another driver who's playing with their phone or just not paying attention or just a bad driver. Should that happen I'd rather have my car written off than have my body written off.
Love the music. I'd say most of those were fatalities.
that olds at 5:00 has the most classic 'punched in the face' look about it, like a WB cartoon character !
Love the music, smooth Jazz... I wish I knew who this was... I remember being in an accident with my Mom in the 60's, a car ran a light and hit the station wagon. I was in the back.... scary...
7:34 guy in the white shirt looks like the dude in Time Cop that Walker first goes back for. he's the one playing the stock market in the past, listening to a Sony Walkman. almost perfect doppelganger! the actor's name is Jason Schombing.
I thought he looked like Earl Scruggs.
Crazy, in contrast to the modern disposable cars that are easily totaled by hail or airbag detonation in the case of an otherwise non-structural damaging accident. Lol
As well crazy, the number of cars recently totaled by a few hailstorms here in the greater Detroit area.
When I was a kid in the late 50's, the doctors office had monthly California CHP magazines that was filled with gruesome photos of car crashes. Trying to shock drivers into more cautious driving, I suppose.
See here you, I think these things called “seatbelts” are going to be the ticket!
Obviously many fatalities in some of these pics. 🙏🏻
Yes, unfortunately so.
@@TheHistoryLounge reminds me of the old Drivers Ed class in HS when they would show all those horrible accidents with the dead drivers along with the passengers. They lasted in my memory forever.
@@skeletor9121 I remember those videos too - blood, bodies, and all.
I read CHP Magazine in senior high study hall.
Fatal crashes from every corner of California in the 60's - 80's
+ Gruesome officer written reports.
Best "safe driving course" I've ever seen !
1:16 Before safety cages,,,,,it’s 2023 I still don’t see safety cages in cars! Are they talkin NASCAR?
When I was a freshman in high school in 1967 I saw a head-on. THe passenger of one vehicle went through his windshield and in through the other car's, landing on the driver's lap. His face was unrecognizable. The driver of the car he landed in had a complete breakdown and scrambled out of the car as fast as she could. As soon as she was clear of her car, the light from the overhead light pole fell on her head. DIdn't kill her, but dropped her like a sack of potatoes. I always wore my seat belt after that.
I used to go out to Webb's Junk Yard in Ellicot, CO to get parts for my old car. The wrecked stuff out there was gruesome.
Id take a car from the 50s over any plastic car of today! Maybe a little xide by side crashes, maybe back reference!
I take back what I've been saying about how strong older car's were built..I'm blown away with how bad they'd bend up compared to the newer stuff..The cabins are built better in most automobiles today compared to years ago...Most of those old cars had metal dashboards and they didn't feel very good when they hit those power poles..My brother and a few others wrecked me in the 40s and 60s cars and trucks..A 48 Dodge truck had a metal dashboard and the early 60s Chevy's that was a plain ol car's had metal dashboards...I had a 63 Chevy Biscayne 2door sedan with no dash pads and my brother had several like that except for the Impala Super Sports and the Pontiac GTO but they still didn't help much especially when they didn't start putting seat belts in em until 68 or 69 cause I don't remember anything having seat belts except for Cadillacs Lincolns and Chrysler Imperials...I'm pretty sure that most of the 60s cars and trucks I've had didn't have power brakes steering and most usually manual transmissions that was mostly on the steering column or better known as 3 on the tree lol..I still love the older vehicle's cause repairs was so easy and I've even put parts from different makes and models just to keep em goin cause I had to learn at a very young age..11 or 12years old is when I started driving and it was a column shift or floor shift cause most people I knew didn't have automatic transmissions..Everyone was into drag racing and they most usually built gear jamming hotrods..
The old cars were stronger in many ways, though far less friendly in a crash. It's uncommon for people to die in 35MPH crashes now, but it happened a lot back then. Entire families often died in their car in highway crashes. The general line of thought back then was that it was safer to be thrown clear of a wreck than to be mangled inside the car, and if you had a 'soft' landing that might have actually been true. Most cars were built without much thought for crash safety till the 60's; the Tucker and Volvo's were some of the first to use safety in their advertising and design. The big advance came with the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which mandated seat belts, collapsible or padded steering columns and dashboards, safety-glass windshields, and dual-circuit hydraulic brakes among other things. Other laws were passed regarding road design safety standards. The end result was fewer crashes and serious/fatal injuries with the most critical factor being seat belt use which wasn't mandated federally till 74. The other thing which has done the most good is actual crash testing with emphasis on the most common types of collisions; frontal, quartering, and side-impact. The much vaunted air bags generally don't do a lot compared to someone properly belted in until you factor in higher speeds where they can be very effective. The problem now is that people do not equate car crashes to death/ dismemberment/ disfiguring like they used to so people drive like lunatics counting on their "safer" car to prevent injury, unlike the old days where everyone was aware that the next car ride could easily be their least and they drove carefully to help ensure that it wasn't.
The good old days. No seat belts, no air bags, no head rests. The dashboards were all made out of metal with no give. When you face impacted the dash it turned into a smashed mess. If you were hit from behind, instant whiplash. They sure had a lot of room though. No air pollution garbage on the engine. In a lot of cars you could actuality stand in the engine bay between the engine and the side of the car. My brother had a 59 Buick Special back in the eighties. Huge vehicle, like driving a submarine down the road. The front bench seat was like a living room couch, with a finned heat pipe running underneath. A heated seat.
Them old cars were death traps. One of my neighbors who would always talk about the new cars not being able to take a hit got killed recently in a horrible wreck. He was clowning in one of his old school chevy impala and hit a mitsubishi outlander. Typical off center crash with the other people only relatively minor injuries.
Wow sounds like he made errily prophetic remark in reverse about his own demise !
He should have seen the video of the 1959 Chevy vs 2009 Chevy Malibu, it's here on UA-cam.
Same midsize Chevys 50 years apart.
They crash test them, frontal partial offset @ 45 mph (60?)
Anyhow, crash test dummy shows both front occupants killed in 1959 Chevy, vs both survive with light to moderate injuries in 2009 Chevy !
There's 20 ways newer cars are safer.
Your neighbor, RIP, had missed that reality.
@psalm2forliberty577 Yeah he was a cool guy but to be honest that car had some really questionable modifications like big rims and from what I was told about 700 plus horsepower.
@@gmac8852
Right there !
The bigger wheels throws off the handling & 700hp, to hot for street use.
Back in the day, I'd race my Datsun 510 at Stadium parking lot "autocross" racing (Cones & Clock).
We'd bump the HP up from stock 95 HP to about 180 HP, and man that was double & you had to exercise extreme caution to not crash.
But 700 HP ?
Unless modern AWD + Traction Control - absent that, death wish on wheels.
On top of lack of safety features the outlander is also a good sized SUV so even in a modern impala your chances wouldn't be that good
i remember my grandpa had a 49 chevy he wrecked it 3 are 4 times still ran after he died
Fantastic video!! I feel much safer in my Subaru now!
It’s not just the safety of the cars, as you point out, it’s the roadway, too. Modern light poles are designed to break away so they don’t end up pushing the engine back into he passenger compartment.
I wish I lived back then... At sixty three years old I just don't like the way the world is today.....
I'm also 63. You wished you lived at a time when:
People smoked because they didn't KNOW any Better??
Measles, Mumps, German Measles, Chickenpox, and...until 1957...POLIO weren't preventable?? The Hepatitis B vaccine has also saved Many Lives.
Heart Disease was Poorly Understood. In addition to tobacco, "Healthier" Margarine, loaded with trans-fatty acids, was widely used. Coronary Bypass Surgery, along with Angioplasty, were Years in the Future.
Type 2 Diabetes had few options for treatment.
There was NO Cure, or Prevention-for almost ANY type of Cancer. At least, Today, we have Mammography, Colonoscopy, and advanced imaging. Chemotherapy can cure Childhood Leukemia (which used to be Deadly) along with Choriocarcinoma of the Uterus (which caused women to Die shortly after giving Birth) as well as Hodgekins Lymphoma and Testicular Cancer. Pap smears, along with the Cervical Cancer vaccine, are widely used. Treating H. Pylori infections, along with drugs like Pepcid and Prilosec, have sharply decreased the Stomach Cancer Death rate. Clean water helped, Too.
Industrial Safety was Very Poor. There were Many Explosions and cave-ins in Underground Coal Mines. Admittedly, Today, much coal is strip-mined, and, of course, we use much Less of it.
Asbestos was widely used, without adequate precautions for either workers or consumers.
A Lot of boys Boxed in High School, because the resulting Brain Damage was covered up. Admittedly, Tackle Football has Many More participants, although we are just now trying to mitigate the risks.
Civil Rights didn't exist for African Americans in the South. Jews and Latinos were Also Frequently mistreated.
Women were kept out of Good jobs and Professions. The Exception was in World War Two, when they were Sorely needed. After the War?...back to "Kinder and Kuchen" (that was a Hitler line.)
McCarthyism was Outrageous, and Unjustifiably ruined Many Lives.
YES...Cars and female movie stars had Better shapes. And, many millions of Men had Union Sinecure jobs, so that they could feed a family of four (sometimes more) without help. Automation, Outsourcing and President Reagan ended that. Crime was Much Lower. African Americans, in the Second Great Migration, found themselves in Bad Slums here in the North. And, many Puerto Ricans fled from their Island, into East Harlem and the South Bronx. Desperation led to Drug Addiction, which led to Violent Crime. We Americans insisted on having a "War on Drugs" instead of treating addiction as a medical issue.
The Sadness over the JFK (and other) Assassinations, followed by LBJ getting us Deep into Vietnam, Ended America's Innocence Forever. He gave us Medicaid and Medicare, and rammed the Civil Rights legislation through. (He wasn't so Good on the latter issue when he'd been a Texas Politician.) All that "Guns and Butter" stuff deepened our National Debt, However. After the Seventies Oil shocks, and the resulting Inflation, there were Years of Economic Misery.
"Green" Energy may End our reliance on Oil Companies, and both Domestic and Foreign Producers. It's Good for the Planet, too.
We had a friend that lost control of his car on a highway, veered into the grass and a stanchion went through the floor board, went up through his testicle and impaled him up to the car roof. He survived, his testicle didn’t.
I Bet that Reeeally ssmtwtF ,n HURT,"john"@?¿
@@ronnymatthews4133 - 🙄
Hopefully he still had one good testicle to rely on.
Yeah right weirdo, his ONE testicle come on now
colorization really adds something to the images....well done...from an old guy in Florida
Thanks, Paul. The colorization is far from perfect, but I agree with you. Compared to the original black and white shots - the colorized ones just seem to have more impact.
Love the old blokes at 3:45 with their pants pulled right up, doing a lot of supposin'.
they aren't "classics" that have crashed, it's old pictures of cars crashes. They are period pictures. These cars were not classics when the pictures were taken
They are now