This absolutely brilliant film from 1959 titled Signal 30 is a 30 minutes long educational video featuring footage of actual accidents filmed on the highways of Ohio, USA. As is explained by a narrator in the film, Signal 30 is a code name for a violent death on a highway used by the highway patrolmen in Ohio. If someone becomes a Signal 30, it means they died in a violent traffic related accident.

The absolutely best thing about Signal 30 is how raw and un-bubble-wrapped it is. Footage itself offers uncensored glimpse into graphic aspects of road accidents, but it’s the narration that gets the maximum props. Just as individual video segments are “in your face”, so is the commentary. I mean, when was the last time you’ve heard someone say such things as:

Now comes the nauseating task of removing the shattered hulk of a life, that had been living so little. Death sometimes plays an overture of torture. See for yourself how sordid and sickening impending death can be. Do you, as a driver wish to assume the responsibility of creating a hardship by destroying the life of the head of a family? Would your conscious ever rest?

You don’t hear reporters talk like that anymore. It’s crazy how much we’ve lost touch with reality yet they still had it in 1959.

Check out the full length Signal 30 – the film by the state highway patrol, a division of the Ohio department of highway safety below and learn something from it. The message the film conveys is as valid today as it had been in 1959.