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Stop Light: 1950s

Ford meets lamppost in West Los Angeles on San Vicente Boulevard in the 1950s. Obviously a hard-hat area. View full size.

Ford meets lamppost in West Los Angeles on San Vicente Boulevard in the 1950s. Obviously a hard-hat area. View full size.

On Shorpy:
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Lucky aim to hit almost dead center

Good thing the concrete pole moved - if it had been an immoveable tree, nobody would have got out of the car alive. That's the engineer in me talking. Tearing out the pole from the ground absorbed a lot of energy that would have otherwise have had to be absorbed by that '53 Ford - to its great detriment.

The windshield is laminated glass, standard fitment since the late 1930s. There is a plastic inner layer glued to two outer layers. In the 1960s, the plastic layer was vastly improved in that it became stronger and better glued to the glass, although this example seems to have worked well. Side windows and backlights only get tempered glass, which shatters into thousands of pieces upon impact, most not too sharp.

However, the 1960s lamination improvement was specifically designed to prevent heads going through it in a crash - our local town mayor tested this out on a Chevy Nova about 1968, as he was one of the crowd who couldn't understand how those dang newfangled seatbelts restrained movement. Luckily for him, the furrow his head plowed across the inner windshield from one side to the other when he drove into the ditch and met a culvert hardly even gave him a cut, but he broke an arm.

Always amazes me the old wives' tales that abound about how old cars were sturdy and new cars are rubbish. The average eye of a non-technically trained citizen is not to be relied upon, much like opinions are not facts but people cling to them come what may, and get offended when you correct them. It was ever thus, nobody likes a smartypants even when their wellbeing is on the line!

Oh Look!

Oh Lookie! A Lamp post.

Perhaps the crushed young sports star did it

My class had to miss "Signal 30", frustrating my teenage appetite for mayhem and gore. Seems that in a previous year, "Bubba" France (later of the LA Rams) was so overcome that he passed out and lay in the aisle for a good portion of the film, so they no longer showed it.

Nothing in this to make me woozy, though we had a film or two in Health class that made me rest my eyes.

It has to be said

That'll buff right out.

West Side Story

I too lived many years in the Los Angeles area, mainly in Santa Monica. And you are correct in that there are two sections of San Vicente Boulevard. One being in the mid city and the other being on the west side. The picture in question was on the west side at the corner of South Westgate and San Vicente.

Licence plate

Texas 1954

Which San Vicente?

As anyone who has lived in Los Angeles all his life (like me) knows, there are TWO San Vicente Boulevards. Did this happen on the one that begins in West Hollywood and ends somewhere in the Mid City area, or the one the one that begins in Westwood, and stretches all the way to the beach?

Style and distinction

OK, maybe those old '50s-'60s cars weren't as tough as we thought, but with their bold designs, bright colors and miles of chrome they sure had style and distinction. I could tell a make and model a half block away. Now all cars looks alike to me, bland and monotonous.

Signal 30

I, along with a Driver's Ed classroom of other horrified teens, watched Signal 30 sometime around 1963. I think that was one reason I never learned to drive until I was 26. Now I'm not going to watch it because I want to continue driving, at least for a little while longer. But the new video shows why the Other Driver, who after sideswiping me a couple months ago, was able to walk away after their car smashed head-on into the center barrier.

Then vs. Now cont.

Current "breakaway" light standards would also help lessen the chance of a fatality in a similar type of accident today.

Not totalled

I bet someone fixed that car right up and it enjoyed at least a few more years of life

They don't build 'em like they used to

For everyone who thinks cars were more solid back in the old days:

[What a great video! Below, the old Driver Ed film "Signal 30," which shows dozens of 1950s cars transformed into sheet-metal origami. - Dave]

I wonder

if the flat rear tire was the cause or result of the accident.

Then vs. Now

No doubt the lampposts and cars were much more solid back then. Can you imagine the same lamp post being hit by, say, a Toyota Prius? I visualize one of those cartoon moments where the post is undamaged, the car is sliced completely in half, and the two halves continue on down the road a ways before falling over.

I guess this comment is the result of watching way too many Chuck Jones and Tex Avery cartoons when I was a kid.

[It's the older car that would deconstruct. Structurally, the cars of 1953 were quite a bit less crash-worthy than the cars of 2011. Roofs were especially flimsy, back in the days before rollover standards. - Dave]

What the baby streetlight said

"When I grow up, I want to be a post on Shorpy."

Really a Ford?

I don't remember any of the Fords of that era having the center bar of the grille broken into narrow segments. That was a style feature of the Mercury, as was the somewhat heavier chrome faux scoop on the rear quarter panel.

[The car is a 1953 Ford. - Dave]

So it is. We even had a '52 and a '54 when I was a kid. Thanks for the reminder.

Quincy Magoo visits L. A.

"I think we've landed McBarker, I heard the landing gear come down."

"Oh Magoo, you've done it again."

It almost looks intentional.

What else could produce that perfect symmetry of strike, unless it was simply bizarre, improbable coincidence?

Whatever it was, it probably killed the driver. In the days of no seat-belts, the momentum from that impact would have propelled the driver's head into the windshield. The "spider of death" glass crazing the resulted from such accidents were famous among ambulance personnel of that period as a certain sign of mortal injury.

[IMHO, this looks more embarrassing than fatal. - Dave]

Woody Wagon

Just might be a Buick.

Glass

The windscreen seems to have survived remarkably well: almost like a laminated screen. Comments anyone?

[Safety glass. - Dave]

I think it’s a ‘52

Damn those distracting radios. There oughta be a law!

Not fatal.

I think they lived, it's right down the center, that's probably the driver in back wearing the suspenders, they help keep his pants up, especially now that they are...uh...soiled.

Clash of the Titans

We all know lampposts are built solid, but so were the cars then, too. Ouch!

Hello lamppost, whatcha knowin'?

I've come to watch your flowers growin'
Ain'tcha got no rhymes for me?
Do-in do do, feelin' groovy
Ba da-da-da da da, feelin' groovy

Ouch

That's why you are not supposed to drive on the sidewalk.
What seems to be lost to history is whether the driver lived. With (most likely) no seat belts, and the position that heavy cement light pole landed, it seems very probable that neither he nor any front seat passenger would have.

Of course the car I am in love with is the woody wagon parked in the background of the picture. You can smash up all the early fifties plain Jane Fords you need to, but save that wagon for me, 60 years later.

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