Safety Belt for Susie

Duration:

Year Published: 1962

Creator: CAHIL

Complete Record: The Norwood family consists of the narrator; his wife, and their daughter Nancy. Nancy has a creepy, life-sized doll, Susie, whom she drags everywhere. Susie gets smashed when the parents plow their 1962 Dodge into a tree. Luckily, the doctor who treats the parents’ cuts and scrapes also happens to be an expert on test-crash baby dolls. He repairs Susie, and Mr. and Mrs. Norwood promise to strap both Nancy and her look-alike doll into the back-seat whenever they go driving from now on. This film spends a lot of time showing staged test traffic accidents, lovingly filmed in slow motion on an airstrip somewhere near UCLA’s Institute of Transportation and Traffic Engineering. As bulky 1950s sedans T-bone each other at forty miles per hour; test baby dolls fly into windshields and camera lenses. Follow-up shots include close-ups of severed doll arms and legs on the pavement. All this is accompanied by dramatic horns and ominous timpani rolls, and sound effects of crashing metal, squealing tires, and crying babies. Dramatizes the need for safety belts for all occupants of an automobile with special emphasis on needs of children. Uses footage of experiments with dummies in cars to show how occupants are tossed about by various types of impact. Emphasizes need for safety belt protection at moderate as well as higher speeds.