Heard rumors back in high school that in earlier years, students enrolled in Driver's Ed were required to watch an educational film with the lurid title Mechanized Murder.
The film was allegedly produced by the Florida Highway Patrol and amounted to a compilation of truly grisly traffic accidents, and showed real victims in the aftermath ... decapitated, burned to death, dismembered or whatever ... to shock and awe 16 year old drivers into driving responsibly and obeying every traffic rule to the letter of the law once they were turned loose on the highway.
Googling to find proof that such a film actually existed's been fruitless so far but it must've existed because a history teacher told us the film was removed from the Driver's Ed program because it back-fired:
Students were either desensitized by the bloody carnage and thought "That'll never happen to me" or became fatalistic, as if the consequences of their driving lives were out of their control. Or worse ... they started laughing because the human, life-changing consequences of the bloody scenes they were witnessing was way beyond their emotional grasp/maturity.
In a nutshell, Mechanized Murder made the situation it was intended to remedy far worse.
Drivers, whether teen aged or not, drive responsibly when they understand how their actions behind the wheel can permanently impact innocent folks ... the other drivers and pedestrians in the street ... or hurt and inflict grief back home on the folks who love them.
My eye is hurting too much to keep typing a parallel to wrap a nice ribbon around a conclusion except for this:
Love Beats Fear, Threats, Intimidation and Legalism Every Time
Those things are the opposite of love... and we've had 2000 years to see it.
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