Anatomy Of an Accident is a 1961 driver's education movie focusing defensive driving, told with a story focusing on the tragic ending of a family out-of-town outing.
Produced by the Bell System – an ancestor to today's AT&T – the main characters are the Avery family, whose patriarch John is a lineman for the company, and because he drives the main line (on a regular basis), he has taken many driver refresher courses stressing safe, defensive driving. The classes are with the assumption that any accident will be presumed to be the Bell employee's fault, a point that will play a huge role in events later in the movie.
We meet John as a well-dressed, middle-aged man wandering down a residential street and coming upon a household sale, where the woman of the house – it's his widow, Helen – selling household goods. (The scene is most notable for a elderly woman demanding to buy a $300 leather easy chair for a fraction of its worth, after making snide remarks about the furnishings and the decor.) John tries to stop the woman, but then realizes no one knows he's there ... .
And it's just then John recalls a sunny afternoon, about a month earlier, to the worst day of his life ... one that started out so nicely. John and his family – wife, Helen; 11-year-old son, Tommy; and 7-year-old daughter, Kathy – are going to his in-laws for a visit. John and Tommy do a pre-trip inspection of the car and, finding everything in order, begin the trip out of town. As they drive through the downtown, they witness a multi-car pileup, caused when an elderly woman (driving an olive green car ... incidentally, the same woman seen in the living room scene at the start of the film) didn't stop at a stop sign and the driver who had the right-of-way had to stop suddenly. John points out that while the primary fault is of the older woman, the accident might have been avoided had several cars following the lead driver not been following too close.
After a stop at a gas station, the Averys are making good time when they come upon the elderly woman and a church friend puttering along the road well below the posted speed limit. Because the narrow, two-lane winding road has few passing lanes, a long line of cars backs up behind the prissy old woman, who stubbornly refuses to pull over and allow the other cars to pass. Eventually, the woman decides to pull onto a side road ... but changes her mind at the last second because the road was "too dusty."
And then ... CRASH!!!!!!!
John, it seems, thought the woman was pulling over but when she pulled back onto the road had to swerve his vehicle into the oncoming lane to avoid a crash with her vehicle. Unfortunately, he crashes head on with a semitrailer truck. John is killed instantly, while Tommy is knocked unconscious; Helen and Kathy are bruised but otherwise uninjured. Of note: The elderly driver continued along; whether she knew there was an accident at that moment is forever unknown.
A post-moterm John blames himself for the accident, considering it a gamble that he should not have taken. It's a point he is sure to tell Tommy – who in the final scene has been revealed to have been unconscious for a month, before he dies in the movie's final moments. As Helen comes into the room and finds her son now deceased, and wailing uncontrollably in a nurse's arms as a doctor tries frantically to find a sign of life, the screen's final message flashes accordingly: "Always drive as though your life depended on it! Because it does! As well as the lives that depend on you!"
Anatomy Of an Accident was less preachy than several other driver's education movies of the era, and had no bloodshed. Still, the intended moral of the story was clear: Drive safely and defensively, and always anticipate that the other driver will make a mistake ... or else you might be seriously injured or killed. The movie remained a staple of driver's education classes into the early 1980s, when newer story-based accident films began taking its place.
Tropes seen in Anatomy Of an Accident:
- Bloodless Carnage ... although the injuries are still very real ... and very deadly.
- Clueless Aesop: Perhaps deliberately so ... John bemoans the fact the accident was entirely his fault, when – even in an era where two-lane highways were still relatively common (the interstate highway system was still largely under construction in the early 1960s) – a clear case could be made that most if not all the blame could be placed on the prissy old woman driver. (Perhaps this was written deliberately so, so as to encourage classroom discussion over who should be to blame and how much.)
- Safe Driving Aesop: The movie's final crawl: "Always drive as though your life depended on it ... ."
- Whole Episode Flashback: The family patriarch recalling in flashback about the day he was involved in a fatal car accident (that killed him and his son).
- Women Drivers: The elderly woman who causes both the fatal accident and (earlier) the multi-car downtown pileup. She stops for neither the pileup or (presumably) the fatal crash.
