Signal 30 – Highway Safety Film from 1959

Posted on by

Signal 30 - Highway Safety Film from 1959

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.

What People Searched For To Land Here:

  • graphic car accident images
  • 1950s car accident photos
  • signal 30 video
  • deadly road accident photos
  • signal 30 film
  • ohio 1959 car accidents
  • signal 30 highway safety
  • 1950\s car crash photos taken in the dead bodies
  • ohio highway patrol signal 30 videos
  • high school educative video highway accidents

Similar Gore

66 thoughts on “Signal 30 – Highway Safety Film from 1959”

  3. Bloody ‘ell, I’m first in the queue for commenting. In fact I’ve never commented before as my password never worked. So to my comment, but first, hi everyone, esp. to Mark. Never mind the gory lumps of butcher meat, check out the fabulous designs of 1950s American cars. They don’t make them like that anymore. Ah! The days when gas was 10c a gallon.

  4. i am so glad you posted this. i actually had to watch this in my youth. very interesting how parents today would probably throw a fit and sue a teacher for showing this. this was fun! thank you

  5. Even highway safety films can’t escape my philosophy of “the older, the better”. Older generations like the one that produced this masterpiece just flat out knew how to make a point. None of that baby treatment that the kids get now days. You aren’t careful on the road, you’ll end up like THIS! (Insert 1950s photo of mangled car crash victim)

    • before one could pixalate or blur out a face of death, which ironicly, these days they no doubt would, because what’s the benift of upsetting the easily offended shit rivet Fleshy Virus Larva? they might cry on You and make you bleed money.

      • I’ve gotten into 3 major accidents where I suffered nothing but a story to tell afterwards. I’m usually lucky when it comes to anything (except finding a job). The video my graduating class had to view was animated! I laughed the whole way through while sheeple called me an asshole, *sigh*

        • Strange how time creepy-crawls when we want it to haul ass, and the other 90% of the time, months and years fly by in the matter of minutes.
          I’m nostalgic of the days gone by that I could post 100 times a day with all the other Students Of Best Gore. I feel like a fucking dropout!
          Anybody seen MedEx? or Suicide King? or Tiger? or anybody else who was cool?

          • I haven’t seen MedEx, or Tiger. I have a suspicion that Suicide King posts under a new name now. Pale Rider. Same grammatical style. Has mentioned Texas. The word “rider” being in the name is synonymous with motorcycles. Just a hunch, though. This is the internet… There’s bound to be similarities out there.

  6. We had an amazing boaters’ safety film in 6th grade much like this, but on the water. Many skulls split and backs are cleaved by propellers every year – not to mention the drunk twinks and hoes flipping and disintegrating on impact with the water.

  7. Ha! That dude in the top pic has been dead a long time. Longer than most of us have been alive. His suffering as a fv is over. Ours continues. All it took was a few seconds of pain to break on thru to the other side. Yea yea, break on thru to the other side and don’t fear the reaper. We’ll be able to fly.

  8. After what seems like months of being gone, having my ass handed to me as I try to beat survival, only having access to the internet on my crappy phone, I get some borrowed time on a computer and what do I find, My old friend Signal 30! What a fantastic death flick that EVERY SINGLE Fleshy Virus on wheels needs to see about a dozen times.
    I have no idea what all I’ve missed and all of My friends here i have missed talking words with.
    Mark, sorry for basically dirting You on the Caption Contest, it was right around that time that the internet as well as other basic parts of daily life become a luxuary around here.
    No way to tell what will happen next, as I simply hope to get things back on track and to get back on Best Gore on a consistant basis again. Something that seems like a distant fucking memory these days.

    I absoutly love traffic films like this, always have, because it’s the one true face of death that the average shit rivet can’t say “That doesn’t apply to Me”….that and it almost always is full of some seriously spectacular dripping images of reality.

  9. Absoulouty haunting. I remember staring at pics like this when I was a kid even though they already looked old. I always wanted to see more and that film brings all my childhood gore memories back.

  10. That was damn interesting, love seeing idiot get punished for their stupidity. Just a shame they always seem to take an innocent with them. Great view nonetheless

  12. At the beginning of the film, when the cop says “OK on the signal thirty en route.” Did anybody else extend an arm with a fist towards the screen and pretend they were Superman flying down the highway?” Very upsetting segment, all those mangled, destroyed vintage vehicles. …sigh!

  14. This was very interesting. The message in this film should be common sense…and that still carries true today. While the number of people killed in auto accidents has increased because of a number of factors present such as increased speed, more drivers, cell phones and texting, most of the accidents in that film would not have resulted in death in today’s cars had the driver been wearing a seat belt. Newer cars are designed to have crush zones, to keep the the steering column from collapsing in, for air bags to “cushion” the blow and seat belts to keep you from flying through a door or window. And my guess is also that the few people in this film that were conscious but died later would still be alive had the accident occurred today because of the advances in medicine, EMT response and medical staff knowledge.
    It was interesting to compare….

    • I noticed there were no neck braces, back boards, oxygen masks, morphine drips……..the list goes on and on. Hell, the ambulance men weren’t even wearing any gloves!

  15. This video and Red Asphalt are what got me into GORE! Love it. Scared the shit out of me yet here I am day after day witnessing more amazing deaths that get me wet…

    • It wasn’t as bad as some of the gore here. :=D Yeah, the kids need so see an updated version of a vid like this before they can get their driver’s license. Kids think they are invincible.

      The worst part is the cars. OMG they were killer cars, literally. But seeing them wrecked is even worse. Great crispy critter vids in the beginning.

  17. Love this video, yall are right, the crap videos they show today have almost no impact on most kids, but they should definitely go back to this one so maybe the kids would actually remember the video thirty minutes after watching it.

  18. It’s unfortunate, but the “Just Say No” anti drug campaign & that “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” anti drunk driving campaign (both from the 1980s) seemed to put all of these topics into a neat, tidy box. No more education on the matter, just a slogan of obedience.

  19. Excellent film… thanks for sharing!

    Yes, seeing those 50′s beauties destroyed was sadder than seeing the mangled fleshy viruses.
    We had a ’56 Desoto when I was a kid ~ that’s what I learned how to drive on!

  22. This was an excellent documentary. Well produced, clear and concise, the viewers were not treated like idiots as is often the way programs are produced today, no punches were pulled in getting the message across, it also reminds us that there have been stupid fucking idiots throughout history and that we are only the latest line of fuckups.

    I too loved the commentary, makes me sad that a lot of the younger people today have lost that distinct, educated way of talking, I wish we had more documentaries like this on Best Gore.

  23. That was awsome :) I liked the part at the beginning where they were playing with the toy cars to resconstruct the accident.

    No political correctness in this – they tell it like it is!

    Wow how times have changed!

  27. This is the gore our grand parents grew up watching in school, not the stupid PG-13 bullshit fake “drunk prom tragedies” they’re showing kids now in days cause they’re to pussified to see the real thing, the whole point of these videos was to shock, scare, and initiate kids into the raw realities of the road

  30. With that orchestral soundtrack, this is what a gore-film by Disney would look like. :D + :S

    That said, we should pause to consider how calloused we have become in some ways. When I was a kid, this would’ve made me shart/barf/nightmare-for-weeks. Now, I think my kids could handle this with little horror.

    Either way, I really enjoyed this vid. Thanks for posting it. :)

  32. Back when they HAD a driver’s ed class, we were shown pics and vids of things like this. Made an impression. They don’t do it anymore due to whiney-ass parents and lawsuit paranoid schools.

  33. ROFL at 22:20 you hear someone say “give me a hand with the cot would you” and to that some says ” can you get her yourself?” The first man answers ” no, shes a big one.” Fuckin awesome that your last moments would be caught on film while your being called fat.

  35. At my high school they played a film that was brand new at the time. It was called Stay Alive at 25, because statiscally you are a lot less likely to kill yourself driving I guess. The film was pretty graphic I just remember one particular scene really well where there was a guy who landed face first in the middle of the road his brains were exposed and blood was draining down both sides of the street. Ill see if its on the internet, it probably is because it was brand spankin new in 2007.

  36. this really think about how dangerous driving really is, and also my dad is a sheriff in charge of traffic patrol so usually when there is a fatality he’s usually working it, i remember being younger and sometimes i would look on his computer and see the dead bodies, man i bet he has a fucking gold mine on his computer now.

  39. The only disturbing thing about this video is the lack of concern about the injured animal from the cattle truck. At least nowadays somebody would have called the humane society and a vet to see to the animals.

  41. that was awesome. I had the 80′s version in 1998! crazy how those people were alive and moving around on the stretcher but the video says they died hours later. Just shows you how much emergency services has advanced as well. A lot more would have survived nowadays. I think a lot of the men in this video were hot!

  43. Oh my god that was liberating! So nice to hear the reporter talk about the drivers and their actions for what it was. No cynicism – just cold facts.

    You should consider making a special section for prima vintage videos like this one, Mark. I remember the autopsy videos fondly as well.

  45. I’m not that old and I remember my brivers ed/health teacher playing this in high school. Ohh the little girls didn’t like it and the guys turned away. Parents were mad as hell. My mom laughed and said “fucking pussies”. I damn near died from laughing!

  46. Im from California and I remember in High School they played another video that was almost the same but more gory and I think it was from the 70′s or 80′s but I know it wasnt this old.

Leave a Reply