Hell’s Highway: The True Story of Highway Safety Films (2026)

HELL'S HIGHWAY THE TRUE STORY OF HIGHWAY SAFETY FILMS is a morbidly curious exploration of the near mythical driver education films shown to American schoolchildren in the 1960s and '70s. Produced between 1959 and 1979 in Mansfield, Ohio, films such as Signal 30 (1959) encouraged safety by force-feeding high school kids color footage of careless driving's dark consequences: blood-stained wreckage, injured bodies, fresh corpses. In the 1970s and '80s, these traumatic films disappeared from the American classroom and assumed an almost mythical status. Eager to document this obscure chapter of cinema history, filmmaker and restorationist Bret Wood compiled these vanishing artifacts of grim Americana into a feature, and interviewed the filmmakers responsible for this misguided educational movement. Originally produced in 2002 in standard-definition video, this new edition of Hell's Highway has been reconstructed through the remastering of the original 16mm interview footage, as new restorations of the original educational films which appear throughout the documentary. Digitally restored in 2K in 2026 by Bret Wood. Several complete films (Mechanized Death, Wheels of Tragedy, Highways of Agony, and Go, Sober and Safe) restored in 2K and, scanned from 16mm reversal A/B rolls preserved in The Prelinger Archives at the Library of Congress. Additional 16mm negatives and composite prints scanned in 2K by A/V Geeks and Severin Films.