Seventies-Style Road Safety TV Show with Spanish Stunt Drivers

"Baskingshark" (BaskingsharkGTX) 04/29/2014 at 23:43 • Filed to: Europe, Seventies, Fiat, Seat, Jaguar, Road Safety

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I came across this Spanish TV show about safe driving on YouTube a couple of years back and they're still as much fun on the 25th viewing. Has anybody else ever seen these?

In 1978, Spanish motoring journalist Paco Costas and French mercenary-turned-stunt driver Alain Petit teamed up for Spanish TV to make a series of shorts offering advice on how to avoid common driving errors. Common driving errors which cause really spectacular crashes.

Called La Segunda Oportunidad (The Second Chance), all the episodes follow the same pattern. Paco, usually wearing a rich Corinthian brown leather jacket, talks to the camera about the subject of the week which'll be something like how to drive in the rain. He'll be intercut with some little story showing the buildup to disaster as someone in a car fails to keep their distance, watch out for motorcyclists, switch their headlamps on at night or whatever. This inevitably leads to a crash. But then, the film rewinds and the driver gets a "second chance" showing what they should have done differently.

This is where the show gets wild, because we're not talking little fender benders here. We're talking full on stunt-show smashes, specially staged for the series and shown repeatedly, in slow motion and from multiple different angles, just so you get the full effect.

This clip is from the first episode and warns you against driving a Jaguar XJ6 too fast without looking where you're going.

Turns out that if you do, you will smash very, very, very hard into any random giant rocks that happen to be in the middle of the road. And die. Whereas if you look where you're going and drive a little slower, you probably won't.

Did I mention the wild Euro-disco-lounge soundtrack? Wait til you hear the closing theme.

Here's a particular favourite, showing what happens if you fail to accelerate fast enough when attempting to merge onto the motorway in your Seat 600 (NB: this is Spain, so anything you think is a Fiat is actually a Seat).

You get in a full on four-car pile up with a Seat 124, an MG 1100 and a Mercedes Fintail. (The fun starts at about 3.30 if you don't want to wait)

Here's another cool one, warning of the dangers of approaching curves too fast when they have big cliffs on the other side. And of driving Seat 850s into ravines. (wreck at 2.40)

There's also a short doc about Petit's stunts and how they set up the crashes, showing some nifty vintage European stunt-show footage here:

The show was originally run from 1978-9, but repeated frequently on Spanish TV. Full episodes (all 24 of them) are on YouTube on Paco Costas' own channel, and I gotta say that even though I was totally watching them for entertainment value, they're hard to forget and a good way of getting their message across.