Red Asphalt???
Posted by caught-n-candie@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 111 comments
I was remembering a particularly traumatic series of movies used in my Drivers Education back say 88-90. The description is pretty “funny”. The things that we experienced- would not fly today and for good reason.
I didn’t realize it was California specific though. Did your Drivers Education include school sanctioned trauma?
This is why we be the way we be.
fridayimatwork@reddit
They didn’t mince words with us
Trotter-x@reddit
Somewhere along a country road life ended for Mary Malone
caught-n-candie@reddit (OP)
Poor Mary.
Thirty_Helens_Agree@reddit
Larry the Leadfoot and Alice’s Adventures through the Windshield Glass.
CheetahNo9349@reddit
It's funny because I don't know him.
Famous_Attention5861@reddit
Here's an appealing fellow. In fact, they're a-peeling him off the sidewalk!
rory_breakers_ganja@reddit
What a terrible waste!
caught-n-candie@reddit (OP)
Miracle we are even 1/2 way ok. 😞
Skatchbro@reddit
That’s where I remember Troy McClure from.
CountryMonkeyAZ@reddit
I had to take a class to keep points on my license, 90 - 92'ish. The police put on the class and we watched this series.
diamond@reddit
"Orange Juice". This was the movie everyone talked about - so named because it showed a gruesome multi-vehicle pileup on the freeway involving an orange juice truck.
This movie was legendary in my neck of the woods because it wasn't allowed to be shown in our driver's ed schools. I grew up in Albuquerque, and the crash in the movie took place in New Mexico. So they decided not to show it in our region out of concern that someone might see a dead relative.
So the story went, anyway. It's entirely possible that it was all bullshit.
InvestigatorQuick118@reddit
In 1982 we had a similar movie in Oregon….’pot holes of death ‘don’t let your brains get washed away by the rain
LocalInactivist@reddit
Huh. I had Drivers Ed in Oregon in 1984 and we didn’t have films. I wonder if they were a district choice. My Drivers Ed teacher was a football coach who overused the word “situation”. You?
InvestigatorQuick118@reddit
The state police took the junior and senior classes and had us watch the movie and slides ,it seemed to be more of a just “say no to drugs” the police showed photos and read use crash reports on top of the other stuff …completely different world back then
LocalInactivist@reddit
Yeah, back then pretty much everything had to have an anti-drug message even if it wasn’t relevant. They’d graft it on to everything.
Our drama dept did a production of “Alice in Wonderland” and there was extensive discussion about cutting the hookah-smoking caterpillar. In the end they had him hold a tube leading to a lamp and printed “Just say no to drugs” on every page of the program. You know, just in case a children’s play inspired someone to start smoking opium. To be fair, someone did claim the entire play was designed to make children start using drugs. But then, when they found out someone played Motley Crue on their boom box at lunch they claimed the school had held a Satanic Black Mass.
savedbytheblood72@reddit
They showed us this " at risk' youth during a special assembly... Some kids laughed. Teachers got all mad
Then they showed us the PBS documentary STREETWISE
that was a good memorable one
ceegee25@reddit
Red Asphalt, Blood on the Highways. Our drivers Ed class demanded it be played again. Not certain the intended message got through.
Pshad4Bama@reddit
I thought it was called Asphalt, Bloody Asphalt
TheRealTheSpinZone@reddit
OMG YES. I totally forgot about this. But YES! I remember sitting in drivers ed in I think Woodland Hills and this was like "the thing" that we somehow all looked forward to...it was kinda like the CHP version of "Faces of Death" and this was our first treat into adulthood. hahaha holy crap I haven't thought about this movie in forever
Own-Contribution-478@reddit
Never saw that video, but when I was in college the police brought a car that had been wrecked by a drunk driver and parked it right in the middle of campus where everyone would walk by it during the day. You could sort of tell that it had been a car because there were some tires twisted in the wreckage, but the thing that has stuck with me to this day was that they left the blood stains on the interior. So many stains. I'm not sure how many people their stunt worked on, but I know for sure it worked on at least one person.
MezAndTish@reddit
We had one about bus safety. It was along the same lines and freaked some people out.
sxhnunkpunktuation@reddit
We saw one of these movies in fourth grade, "And Then It Happened" about distracted driving. It was so disturbing that the teacher turned it off the moment it started showing, in the best 70s slow-motion technology available at the time, mutilated kids' bodies being thrown from a school bus.
Pressman4life@reddit
The one we saw was "Mechanized Death" from I think the 50's
fsckitnet@reddit
Wasn’t California only. We had it in Oregon too.
hemidak@reddit
Blood Flows Red On The Highway
SomeBitterDude@reddit
Yeah this was what we had. Those were the days, when a high school drivers ed instructor could show you snuff films as part of your education.
Makes you wonder how we fell behind all those other countries in math and science hahaha
hemidak@reddit
Our Drivers Ed instructor rear ended my mom as she was stopped on the main road as she was waiting for traffic to pass so she could turn onto our street.
romulusnr@reddit
On one of my ride alongs, the driving instructor stopped b y his house and grabbed a nuked slice of pizza on a paper plate. He brought it into the car and held the plate against the steering wheel. He paused, turned to the three of us kids in the car, and said, "Don't ever do this," and proceeded to drive away one handed while eating the slice.
Class act that guy
DoomsdayMachineInc@reddit
From the film Moving Violations.
hemidak@reddit
I have that on DVD !!!
FallenValkyrja@reddit
Love that movie.
daddyjohns@reddit
This was an actual instructional in Alabama schools. Everyone in my class failed this film (because it was watched while driving in simulators). When they put that first crash in the drive, one girl literally fell out of her simulator onto the floor.
Far_Winner5508@reddit
Ha!
Just coming here to say this.
Ok_Blueberry304@reddit
Yup we had this one!
therealfozziebear@reddit
https://i.redd.it/br83sl5ejd5f1.gif
Ceorl_Lounge@reddit
I vaguely remember one called Mechanized Death. Wasn't as gruesome as I'd hoped for, cause that name is Metal AF and I was in my peak slasher movie phase.
SJB3717@reddit
Yes, our Driver's Ed class in 1990 had to watch Mechanized Death too
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y93URRKgGto
Rlyoldman@reddit
We got Signal 30
Extension_Excuse_642@reddit
Yep, Red Asphalt in SoCal.
Capnhuh@reddit
red asphalt is also the name of the playstation exclusive sequel to the SNES/Genesis game "rock and roll racing"
Stump303@reddit
They are gnarly
DisturbingPragmatic@reddit
Signal 30 made someone in my driver's ed class pass out.
Karadek99@reddit
I was sad. These got all talked up to me, and we didn’t see them in our high school class.
Dismal-Bobcat-7757@reddit
We had Red Asphalt and Mechanized Death.
wetwater@reddit
Nope, the safety videos and pictures we were shown in drivers ed were pretty generic. It was somewhat of a letdown because I heard all about it and what I got didn't line up with my expectations.
I thought it was an urban legend or an exaggeration for several years until the Internet came along and I was able to look that kind of stuff up.
FracturedNomad@reddit
I knew about it but I don't recall ever seeing it. My memory of it is foggy.
hdckurdsasgjihvhhfdb@reddit
Was this the one with the charcoaled person in the driver’s seat? By the way, when u I saw the title I immediately thought of the asphalt on I-80 in eastern Pennsylvania
blackandbluegirltalk@reddit
Oh God yeah. They brought the entire school into the auditorium and showed it on a giant projector screen. There was some kind of live presentation too, because I remember a woman giving a talk after the film. She might have been an EMT??
I've been haunted by this for YEARS.
foreskinfive@reddit
Thanks for posting this. I'm going to tell my daughter. She's in drivers training right now.
caught-n-candie@reddit (OP)
Oh no. Be gentle. I told my 20 year old that we had to endure this kind of thing and he said, yah well- we had to worry about being shot at school. Touche.
foreskinfive@reddit
I told her all about it. She's fine. These kids have been through a lot of shit already with shooting drills and covid. Red asphalt conceptually is a cakewalk. It's good to know how mortal you actually are from a young age IMO
Environmental-Gap380@reddit
Did anyone else have the film projection driving simulators? You had a steering wheel, gas, and brake pedals linked to a sensor. At certain points in the run, you got measured on your reactions. A little light flashed when you did something wrong. My friend and I decided to see who could max out the errors. Found out that the system was linked to a mechanical counter. It only had two digits. We laughed when we only saw 2 or 3 errors on the counter at the end because the counter rolled to 00 at 100. The class was taught by the football coach/gym teacher. He told us to take it serious the next time. Same guy who in the practical driving had us go through the McDonalds Drive-thru to get him a coffee. The McDonalds was a big deal that year. It opened when I was in 9th grade. Before then the closest was 30 miles away.
We didn’t watch all the films, but what we saw was pretty grim.
Waffuru@reddit
Yup, I remember those. Funny that it was California, I just assumed everyone had to watch these things. Went to school in Santa Clarita.
Nate8727@reddit
I remember the train videos in the 80s/90s as a kid. I stayed away from railroad tracks for sure.
First-Ad-7960@reddit
These films were the stuff of legend in NYC where we had no drivers ed program of any kind. Friends and relatives from other states would tell us about them.
I-Am-All-Me@reddit
Yes!!!! 15 1/2 years old, taking driver's ed, watching a movie that equated to The Faces of Death movies! Freaked us out bad.
crofootn@reddit
HAHA perfect analogy. My friends and I were very much into Fangoria magazine and early 80’s slasher/ultra-gore movies. So we were on a mission to find copies of Faces of Death since it was the holy grail of gore legend. Then we all went to Driver’s Ed and had our minds blown when they flipped on the shockingly gory videos that made Faces of Death feel like a goofy schlock-fest.
Mid-80’s small-ish town Kansas
caught-n-candie@reddit (OP)
Oh ok so just made in California. I recall a specific scene with a motorcycle driver to this day. So I guess they were… effective? 🥲
I-Am-All-Me@reddit
Not at all! We still drove like idiots once we had our license. As teens, we were invincible! Even after losing friends to bad accidents.
ElJefe0218@reddit
Kiss my asphalt
karlhungusjr@reddit
you misspelled "grits"
feder_online@reddit
Yes, and several of the accidents were taken from HWY 17 that runs 20'ish miles from San Jose to Santa Cruz over the Santa Cruz Mountains. There were decades when it did it's wind-wind-wind without a center divide, and people racing downhill created some epic accidents that took CHP a loooooong time to get to because the accident would close the road.
caught-n-candie@reddit (OP)
17 is awful. Beautiful but scary af. Parts of 101 also make me dizzy and sad.
feder_online@reddit
I knew a guy who drove for a living back in the 80s/90s, and every time he got on what is now 880, he'd get on his CB and say, "Pray for me; I drive The Nimitz!"
20 guys would holler back, "Welcome Back, Speedy..."
The_Observatory_@reddit
Memory unlocked. I've never seen or heard of this video, but I just remembered that there was a metal band in the late 80s called "Rhed Asphalt." This must be where the name came from, but I have no idea why they spelled it "rhed."
marthaanne3@reddit
In high school, our Drivers Ed teacher would dress in all black, like a funeral director, while playing these movies. Of course, we were sitting in our simulators.
LocalInactivist@reddit
Our Drivers Ed teacher was busted for drunk driving. He blew .24 BAC (three times the legal limit). His sentence was largely community service, which he satisfied by teaching drivers ed.
He was also granted an occupational license because he was also the football coach. To be fair, that was a reasonable accommodation. The school was several miles outside of town, there was no bus service, and the town had maybe two cabs. I can see the logic behind letting him drive when it was required for his job.
However, he could be seen driving around town on the weekend shopping and such. He also dropped by the auto shop to take motorcycles for a spin (in shorts with no helmet).
The result was that it destroyed any credibility he had. I knew for a fact that he didn’t care about what he was teaching us and didn’t believe in any of the safety practices he harped on.
Exact-Pause7977@reddit
thanks. /s
i’d successfully repressed that bit of trauma.
caught-n-candie@reddit (OP)
Sorry!! 😣 We are all in this together??
Exact-Pause7977@reddit
yeah… youtube has it behind age restrictions.
im not saying this link points to it…
but i am saying DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK:
https://youtube.com/shorts/SXHMnicI6Pg
yt_BWTX@reddit
Well played sir, well played
cascadianpatriot@reddit
I’m still afraid of trains because of those drivers ed videos.
QuietParsnip@reddit
I took driver's Ed in Ohio in '87 and I remember the traumatic videos, though I don't remember the titles. I do remember older kids talking about them like it was a big rite of passage to go through. "Oh, you're in driver's ed? Did you see the videos yet?" said with a knowing smirk.
We also had the staged car crash aftermath assembly in the football stadium. Bring in a crashed car, some kids made up to look like crash victims and act the part while the local fire dept came in extract the 'victims' and take them away in an ambulance while one kid was laid out on the track with a sheet over him. Happy prom season, kids!
ngreenaway@reddit
i remember being shown some volumes of red asphalt while in the army, in california mid 90s
BloopityBlue@reddit
I saw this/these videos in my drivers ed class in '93 in a suburb outside of Chicago. I remember it being extremely graphic and traumatic to watch. I'm on the fence about whether it was appropriate or not though - I genuinely think that young people learning to drive today don't have enough fear of how dangerous it is.
kellzone@reddit
Ponch and Jon taking things up a notch.
caught-n-candie@reddit (OP)
Mike6PackIPA@reddit
We had a video called “Dead is Dead” in 1982
Odd-Animal-1552@reddit
I vaguely remember the videos. I half remember a narrator quote: speed is irrelevant, it’s what comes with it that kills. Or something like that lol.
Poultrygeist74@reddit
There was a vehicular combat game called Red Asphalt for PlayStation, it’s the first thing that came to mind
More-Equal8359@reddit
I also recall very graphic films during driver's ed. 1981, 82 or so. My instructor made it optional to view.
jvlpdillon@reddit
We watched one in elementary school about a kid dropping a rock off a bridge. The rock lands in someones windshield and there is a bloodied screaming woman in the driver's seat. That shit was traumatic.
caught-n-candie@reddit (OP)
Holy poo - what tf is wrong with boomers. Sorry.
cbar22@reddit
When I was stationed at NAS Lemoore in the early 90’s this was shown as part of the base orientation. There was a unique, thick fog in the San Joaquin valley that made vision particularly poor. This was meant to “scare straight” the young sailors there for the first time. It was gruesome and I remember folks actually getting ill. I’ll never forget it.
paintphob@reddit
That thick fog is known as Tule fog. Horrible stuff.
5h4tt3rpr00f@reddit
As a non-American, I only know of these from Friends.
ArtisticDegree3915@reddit
I never took driver's ed. I think the only reference I remember to this was Dragnet.
But we did have school sanctioned trauma. We had a substitute teacher who was a state trooper. He would come in uniform with his gun and park his patrol car out front. He brought a bunch of thick photo albums of accident scene pictures. The kind where you look and see a shoe and then realize the foot is still in it.
Sadly, ironically, and tragically I saw a new story about him. He had died in a car accident several years after I graduated from high school.
JagerAkita@reddit
Ugh, had drivers ed right before lunch. Square pizza wasn't that appealing
Hardjaw@reddit
We had this or something similar in Iowa. Then, right after watching highway snuff films, I watched Batman.
Available-Medium7094@reddit
Mechanized Death
BreadfruitOk6160@reddit
I remember a Ohio State Patrol one
Bird2525@reddit
Don't you remember those films they showed us in high school? Red Asphalt. Blood on the Highway. Joe Friday: You picked two of my favorites.
Old-Kaleidoscope1874@reddit
We watched one about a car going over railroad tracks in the 1980s. I think about it every time I go over them to this day.
archedhighbrow@reddit
My driver's Ed was in 1983, and there was nothing like this.
numsixof1@reddit
Saw one of those in Drivers Ed in the early 90s
JoeNoble1973@reddit
We watched them for drivers ed here in PA, it was in 88-89. I still remember a man screaming and spasming while being dragged from a smashed vehicle. Voiceover said he had a spinal and was paralyzed. “Don’t be like Billy, obey speed limits!”
lovepony0201@reddit
I honestly looked forward to these videos. Not necessarily for the movies themselves, but the way it made the prudes recoil and cower.
Mediocre_Meringue646@reddit
I remember drivers Ed (in Cali) and our class was eating popcorn while watching Red Asphalt… late 90’s
Disastrous-Food-9223@reddit
My baby’s the star of a drivers ed movie— great song
Ianthin1@reddit
We didn't have that, but we did get gruesome footage and photos from the inside of a church bus that had been hit head on by a drunk driver. The state police showed it as part of a anti-drunk driving program. It happened in the 80's about 30 minutes from us and at the time was the worst drunk driver accident in US history IIRC. We saw VHS footage of the interior of the bus while there were still bodies in it. I was 16-17 at the time, some of the kids that saw it were as young as 13.
They also showed gruesome photos of motorcycle crash scenes, one with parts and pieces of a rider scattered across almost 500' of roadway.
We had no advance notice of the program, no permission slips or anything. Just showed up for school and surprise! Here's footage of meat crayons and charred kids after a day at an amusement park!
caught-n-candie@reddit (OP)
Are you ok? I remember that motorcycle one exactly. And I don’t remember much.
neoyeti2@reddit
That and the hunter safety videos (grew up in Montana)!. Then went to Army Medic school and got to see a video on being a medic/nurse in Vietnam - lots of gore in that one! Do they even show videos like that now? I guess it was ok to traumatize us so we would become aware lol.
ExcellentLaw9547@reddit
My old man taught driver Ed for 40 years. He had a bunch of them he’d play on a reel projector.
Kestrel_Iolani@reddit
We had a series of films like that in drivers ed (Utah, 86-87) that we called the "Ohio State films" Never saw the red asphalt but I'm guessing it was similar.
currentsitguy@reddit
Never too drivers ed. My grandfather taught me.
LetheSystem@reddit
My wife was telling me about this literally last night, in the context of what to do when confronted with an emergency vehicle. "We might have been taught that. All I remember from driver's education is the dead bodies, though. The blood on the streets."
GraphicSarcasm@reddit
American Family Insurance...
.... auto, home, business, and life.
They sponsored our videos.
ONROSREPUS@reddit
How do you people remember this stuff? I remember seeing the video's with the graphic crap but I was never paying attention enough to remember the dang names of the series. And yes I passed my drivers test on the first shot only missing one point.
caught-n-candie@reddit (OP)
Tracks. lol honestly I recall very very little of my life before like 30.
ScienceMomCO@reddit
Yes, and I also learned to drive in California
Mudder1310@reddit
Red Asphalt and “Room to Live” were the drivers ed vids we saw.