17th May 2008
Driver’s Safety Films: Live and Let Live
Live and Let Live, produced in 1947 by Ætna Insurance, is one of the few Driver’s Safety films that I’ve watched and thought, This would actually be great for drivers to see. It covers the basics quickly, so you’re not bored to death by each point. At times it gets a bit preachy (what driver’s safety film doesn’t?), but it doesn’t feel heavy-handed like some do. I really like the stop-motion animation; the models are well done, as are the background scenery and roads. (Model train enthusiasts will be excited to know there are plenty of locomotives included, although the only purpose of their existence is to crash into careless motorists.)
One intriguing note: Around 6 minutes in, look carefully — you’ll see a blinking green light at that intersection. Not many of those left anymore!
In British Columbia and a few U.S. state, a flashing green signal is used at a pedestrian crossing, at which pedestrians have the ability to stop traffic to allow a safe crossing….
In several European countries, a flashing green light is used in crosswalks to indicate that signal is going to change from green to red soon. Therefore, flashing green has roughly the same meaning to pedestrians as ordinary yellow signal has for motorists.
Wikipedia claims that a flashing green can be found in Cambridge and Somerville, but in my seven years living there, the only one I ever saw was at an intersection in Middle Of Nowhere, Massachusetts.
That Wikipedia article has some serious misunderstandings of what certain uncommon signal patterns mean. The dubious sections about Massachusetts almost all appear to have been written by a speaker of a non-American dialect (”red bulb”?), so I would give little credence to anything found there. The article is rightly flagged as containing “unverified claims.”
[...] are a few sequences with stop-motion photography, but it’s nowhere near as well-done as in Live and Let Live; overall, very dull. Are we really surprised that it’s hard to make intersection right-of-way [...]