Crash And Live

"Crash and Live" is a sort of public service announcement meets public relations presentation about the improvements in automobile safety in the mid 1950s. Colonel John Paul Stapp was a physician in the Air Force who was interested in how G-force effects interacted with the human body. He believed that human bodies could withstand more than the accepted limit in the 1940s of 18 G’s. This black and white film reel shows an interview with Colonel Stapp of Holloman Air Development Center in New Mexico (01:55), along with some of the human factors tests conducted by the colonel and other expirementers in the auto and air industries. The U.S. Air Force officer and flight surgeon is known for his research on the effects of acceleration and deceleration forces, even personally testing the results of withstanding four tons of force with himself strapped to a rocket sled that he built to accelerate down a track at hundreds of miles an hour. While using crash tests with stunt dummies was the norm during the time in speed experiments as high-stakes as the one Stapp performed, the scientist and record-breaker attempted the feat in-person. At 3:07, John Moore, the Director of Automobile Crash Injury Research of Cornell University Medical College is shown speaking on behalf of Cornell’s research team regarding the findings of the institute. The film introduces other auto industry speakers who apply Stapp’s statistical findings to automobile crash tests and announce improvements to be made upon problematic features of vehicles like window and mirror locations (3:04-12:01). Alex L. Haynes of the Ford Motor Company presents related findings and points to steps his company will take to reduce injuries in automobile crashes (4:07-11:00). The reel includes these press briefings in an effort to show safety measures being taken for public safety in cars and is produced by Information Productions, Inc. of New York in the year 1955.