- Do you remember
when driving cross country
required a shovel and axe?
- Any potential driver
should have been suspicious
about the claims
of great luxury.
- You can get lost
in a sandstorm.
On a snowy mountain pass,
you can go right off the road
because there are no guardrails.
- Or when the open
road had you seeing things?
- Highway hypnosis means
that you're completely awake,
but your brain has checked out.
- All of these incidents
create sort of a panic.
It comes to be called a
new and deadly k*ller.
- Or when the right
of way was determined
by hand-to-hand combat.
- They would have some
poor sucker out there.
You go, you stop, you go.
Nobody's paying attention.
- Which also means a bunch
of people start fighting
in the streets.
- These are the things we
used to do for fun, for money,
or maybe out of boredom
that we'll never see again.
Were they dangerous? Certainly.
Deadly? Occasionally.
But boy, wasn't it exciting?
- Remember when the open
road felt like freedom,
a full tank of
gas, a fold out map
and miles of highway
stretching toward the horizon
and no road captured that
spirit better than Route 66.
But as millions of Americans
would soon discover,
getting your kicks came
with more than a few bumps.
- In the early 20th century,
if you wanted to go from
Chicago to Los Angeles,
you better have several
months of free time
because it is a long journey
and also a really slow one.
It's mostly rough,
unpaved roads.
The maximum speed is
about 20 miles an hour.
And if you break down,
you're often breaking down,
literally in the
middle of nowhere.
- But much of
that changes in the 1920s
when a new highway
is established,
one that stretches from Chicago
all the way to Los Angeles
and they call it Route 66.
- This roadway really
becomes the symbol
of freedom and adventure
and this notion that
you can have the life
that you want out west, you
just got to get on this road
and go find it.
- At first, it's a
patchwork
of dirt roads stitched together.
So if you look at a
map, it seems a bit wild
with all the twists and
turns scattered throughout,
but hundreds of
thousands of people
in the 1930s begin driving on it
as part of a great
westward migration.
- At this time, Route 66 is
going through a lot of farmland,
so it wasn't unheard
of to be stopped
because of a herd of cattle
that are just crossing the road.
- Eventually it becomes
the first fully paved
highway in America.
- By 1938, so many people
have driven Route 66
that they've begun to
call it The Mother Road.
- You also have the
birth of the roadside
attraction, like the world's
biggest rocking chair
or the world's biggest
ketchup bottle.
Each one of those was designed
to grab some of those
tourism dollars.
- By 1955, over a
million cars are traveling
along Route 66 every year
and that's a problem.
- The road is
basically unchanged
from when it was first laid.
It's this really narrow road,
no lane dividers, no shoulder,
and this is America's most
trafficked tourist roadway.
- And there's no
rules about who can be
on the road,
so that means cars, trucks,
All the cars are sharing
this nine-foot wide lane,
which is smaller than some
grocery store aisles today.
Everybody's just using it to
get to where they need to go,
but that's what makes it so
intense and so dangerous.
- There are no merging
lanes at this time.
So to get onto Route 66,
you're essentially making
a hard right, flooring it,
and then hoping that no one
comes and hits you from behind.
- So just getting
onto this busy highway is
already a recipe for disaster.
- It bears noting
that at this time,
most states don't
have a speed limit.
And even if a state
has a speed limit,
there's no fancy
reflective signs
or any kind of lights
along the highway.
No, no, no, no, no.
If you're lucky, there is a
hand-painted or wooden sign
that you can't
even see at night.
- Keep in mind, the
cars back then were these
gigantic hunks
of steel and safety wasn't
even a consideration.
Hundreds of people are dying
from all these crazy accidents.
You've got the Devil's
Elbow, Dead Man's Alley,
Dead Man's Curve.
- In 1953, New Mexico
alone sees 110 fatalities
on Route 66.
- Thanks to all this,
Route 66 gets a new
nickname, Bloody 66.
- Finally, the federal
government steps in
to create the modern interstate
with the 1956
Federal Highway Act.
However, there is
a massive downside.
Less traffic means that the
businesses all along Route 66
begin to close
because quite simply,
they can't afford to stay open.
- Route 66 proves to
be a dramatic milestone
for our growing country.
We owe a lot of gratitude
to these forgotten roads
that pave the way for what
we now take for granted.
- As the nation's
highways improved,
driving became faster,
smoother, and more predictable,
which turned out to be
a problem on its own.
- When the US starts laying
tens of thousands of miles
of these new super highways,
they're a complete game changer.
Now people are flying
down these roads
at 60, 70 miles an hour
and they're cutting down hours
from their daily commutes.
- But as drivers start
to take advantage
of these smooth new highways,
suddenly there's
a new phenomenon
and we begin to hear these
unusual reports from drivers
that drive long distances,
especially at night.
- In 1958, a driver is
going through Illinois
when he sees a tiger
and slams on the brakes.
- Around the same time,
there's a man driving
in rural Georgia
when he says he sees
a big colonial mansion
in the middle of the road
and he swerves in order
to avoid running into it.
- There's a guy in
Pittsburgh who is convinced
that he ran over some guy
in the middle of the road.
He stops, he calls the cops.
They look for this body
and they can't find it.
- But it turns out
these incidents aren't real.
They are hallucinations
and they are occurring
all over the country.
The new smooth super highways
are creating a new phenomenon
that is labeled
highway hypnosis.
- Highway hypnosis
means that you're completely
awake, your eyes are wide open,
but your brain has checked out.
- Researchers find out
that new highways are
literally too easy to drive on
and that lulls people into
sort of a trance-like state.
- Before this, car
accidents were caused
by multiple car collisions
or there's a major
problem with the road.
- Now a new category is
growing faster than any other
and that is the
one car collision
when a lone driver
just spins off the road
or runs into a pole or a
bridge for no apparent reason.
- In 1956, newspapers report
that single car
accidents are responsible
for 40% of all
traffic fatalities.
- All of these incidents
create sort of a panic.
It comes to be called a
new and deadly k*ller.
Chevy releases a safety
film on the subject.
- The steady pace
of monotonous high speed driving
on a highway can lull
the driver's eyes
and mind off the road.
- To combat highway
hypnosis, drivers get a lot
of practical advice.
- The government starts
suggesting all of these kind
of crazy things like
take your right shoe off,
put your hand out the
window, listen to music,
or sit on an
uncomfortable board.
They're just these
strange hacks.
- An ACE driver.
Alert, courteous, educated.
- The Navy recommends
running the windshield wipers
even in dry weather just
to have the distraction.
- One safety engineer
actually recommends
taking your
mother-in-law with you
because she'll
probably keep you up
through various annoyances.
- None of these weird
remedies actually fix the
problem and it soon becomes
clear that a super smooth road
with too little stimulation
can be a danger in itself.
- So the result is
a range of fixes
that we would recognize today,
but also we take for granted.
Things like reflective
paint on the roads
and on the road signs, raised
barriers between lanes.
- There's a whole effort to
make the roads less straight
so they add curves
to the highway
that force the driver to
pay attention and stay awake
even if that makes
the route less direct.
- But the biggest
change comes in 1955
on the Garden State Parkway.
They installed the
first singing shoulders.
That's that edge of the
highway where it's all serrated
and if you drift over there,
then it makes a loud noise
and that'll awaken you
and today we call
these rumble strips.
- Ah, the rumble strip.
The highway's way of saying,
"Hey, wake up before
things get interesting."
- In the 1970s, with
their big rigs, convoys
and CB radios,
truckers ruled the road
but when it came to following
the rules of the road,
let's just say it
was a different time.
- For the first half
of the 20th century,
if you wanted to
move large amounts
of cargo around the country,
your best option is a train.
- This all changed in the 1950s
as people began moving from
the cities to the suburbs.
The Federal-Aid Highway
Act supercharges
interstate highway construction.
Trucks get bigger
and more powerful,
capable of carrying
everything from your produce
to the government's
nuclear weapons.
- There was a mystique
to the trucker back then.
Big rigs were exotic,
beautiful, powerful,
and as a kid interested
in big machines,
I was just swept
directly into it.
- By 1972, nearly
a million big rigs are
on the highways.
It's a $15 billion industry.
And many of the truckers
are independent contractors
and they're all competing for
a bigger slice of the pie.
And the rules, they're
largely non-existent.
- In a lot of
states in the '70s,
in the heyday of
trucking, you didn't need
to get a special license.
You just needed a
driver's license
and to be of a certain age.
Then they gave you the
keys to a tractor trailer
and the same guy who
learned to drive on like a
Dodge Dart was suddenly
barreling down the highway
in something half the
size of a city block.
- With
little restriction,
legions of truckers hit the road
but the new administration
imposes new obstacles
to overcome
including lowering the speed
limit to 55 miles per hour.
- Truckers decide the
answer is not to reduce
their speed,
but rather to keep driving
fast and avoid getting caught.
- One thing working
in their favor,
in the 1970s, states don't
share driving records.
This means truckers take
advantage of the system
by getting different
licenses in different states.
If they're pulled over,
they just take out the one
with the fewest violations.
- They embrace something
that was originally
made for farmers.
It's called Citizens
Band radios or CBs.
- CB radios started
popping up in these trucks
to warn each other
where the cops were.
So you had a massive
surveillance system on the cops
and then a massive deception
with all these multiple
driver's licenses.
But hey, truckers gotta truck.
- The big rig truckers
become heroes.
Think of Smokey and the
Bandit, a number one film.
Think of C.W. McCall's Convoy.
Kids are dressing like them.
They're the coolest
guys on the highway.
Everyone wants to be a trucker.
- But the brakes
are about to be put
on all the fun.
- There's a reason
that today truckers are subject
to so many more regulations.
In truck crashes, the
casualty count tends
to be much, much higher.
- Truckers in the '70s
had brutal deadlines,
which often resulted
in taking pep pills
to stay awake for long journeys.
That, along with minimal
safety regulations,
made the highways
extremely dangerous.
- If the truck is
carrying some kind of dangerous
substance, these
crashes can be lethal.
In 1976, there's this
tragic truck crash.
Ammonia spills everywhere.
It kills six people
and injures nearly 180.
- In 1979, there
are over 6,000 fatal crashes
involving big trucks.
The deadliest year on record.
And the era of no-rules trucking
comes to a screeching halt.
- By 1986, the
Commercial Motor Safety Act
standardizes the rules
for getting a commercial
driver's license
across the states
but that hated 55 mile
an hour speed limit,
that stays around till 1995.
- In the era that I grew
up,
truckers had this almost
mythological feeling to them.
Before all these
rules come in to be like,
"hey, you can't just pluck
some dude off the street
and put him behind the
seat of a rolling tank
and set him loose on society."
- Of course, truckers
weren't the only ones
pushing the limits.
There was one
driver in particular
whose need for speed
inspired a road race
so extreme it became
the stuff of legend.
- Brock Yates loves
cars, he's an amateur racer.
He's a writer for Car
and Driver Magazine.
And for him, driving fast
is the American dream.
- In 1971, Yates is concerned
that we've got so many new
safety regulations and rules
that it's taking the
fun out of driving
and so he comes up with
a really interesting idea
to protest that.
- The idea is a
race across America.
You start in New York,
you end in Los Angeles.
Get there as fast as you can
and do it by any
means necessary.
- He names the competition
after a legendary racer
from the early 1900s,
Erwin Cannon Ball Baker,
famous for driving
cross country 143 times.
- It's known as
the Cannonball Run.
- On November 15th,
in eight vehicles gather to
start the 2,800 mile race
at a Manhattan garage
called the Red Ball Garage.
- They take off just after
midnight and whoever gets
to Redondo Beach,
California, the fastest wins.
- During the race,
drivers are on the road all day
and all night.
They are averaging
sometimes topping out
at 175 miles per hour.
- On a public road
that someone else is doing 55
miles an hour, that's insane.
- To avoid stopping for
gas,
competitors are
carrying hundreds
of gallons of fuel with them.
You literally are
going to explode
if a crash were to happen.
- Despite the
insanity of this race,
the police are not all that
interested in stopping it.
- Laws differ from
state to state.
And at this time, communication
between different state police
forces is sorely lacking.
- Surprisingly, the
cops only give out 10 tickets.
In fact, when one
of the competitors
reaches the finish line in LA,
they actually
got a police escort
with a cop car and a motorcycle.
- After 35 hours, 54
minutes,
the winner crosses the
finish line and it's Yates.
This is by far the fastest
anyone has ever driven
across country at this time.
- The races run
four more times in the 70s
with racers continuing to
outmaneuver each other,
but their risks are shared
with everyone on the road.
- Dangers do start
to show themselves.
Cars are not really meant to
be driven 100 miles an hour
for hours and hours at a time.
- Lots of things go
wrong during the race.
I mean, there's engines blowing,
there's transmissions
overheating, tires being blown.
- Today, mainstream
media reports would likely frame
this reckless activity
in a negative manner,
but then the Cannonball Run
sort of gets a glowing writeup.
Car and Driver Magazine puts
a headline right on its cover
and says these men are wanted
for breaking the dumbest
law since Prohibition.
And just as a reminder,
Brock Yates is not only a
writer for Car and Driver,
but he's an editor.
- But with
more eyes on them,
drivers have to rely on their
wits to stay on the road.
- Eventually, cops
start cracking down,
so drivers stoop to
ridiculous lengths
to keep the race going.
- Yates' team dresses
up their van to look like an
ambulance so they could get
through traffic faster.
Another crew dresses
like Catholic priests.
There's even a
team with a cooler
that's loaded with
pig's eyes on ice
and it says "Rush to
Eye Bank" on there.
I mean, that's clever, I feel
like that would have to work.
- When one team
gets pulled over,
they actually show fake permits
that say they're part of an
official highway speed study.
It's even rumored
that one of the teams
turns off its headlights
and uses night vision to
evade cops during the night.
There are no major accidents
or fatalities during any of the
races, so I guess it worked.
- I love a good road trip.
I just prefer arriving
without setting any records.
- Have you ever been stopped
at a traffic light so long
that you started to wonder,
"hey, is that thing stuck?"
Well, in the early
days of automobiles,
drivers didn't have that problem
because there weren't
any traffic lights.
- In 1908, the Model
T really changes the face
of transportation
in this country.
Suddenly everyone's got cars,
but there is a little
bit of an issue.
- The streets are
already pretty crowded.
They're crowded
with other people,
with street cars, with horses.
- Most of them don't
really know
what to do at an intersection.
No one really knows when to go,
which also means a bunch
of people start fighting
in the streets.
- It was chaos.
Cities realize it can't go on
like this.
And their first
solution is an umbrella
that said on one side, stop
and on the other side, go.
If it's raining,
that poor guy, he has a
little coverage from the rain.
- Yeah, umbrellas that
had stop and go printed on it
and they would have some
poor sucker out there
twisting the umbrella each way
to let you go, you stop, you go.
The problem is not
everybody can read.
Then if it was
dark out at night,
can you even see the umbrella?
The system broke down
almost immediately.
- In 1914, there
was a breakthrough.
Cleveland inventor James Hoge
creates the world's first
electric traffic light.
It's a system of four pairs
of red and green lights
placed on a post.
- This is a huge leap forward.
Drivers can actually see
these lights. They're high.
It allows people to do
a lot more night driving
and they can drive faster
because they have the reliance
of these traffic lights.
- However, there's
no transition light.
It's just stop and go.
So you have no warning.
That creates a lot of accidents.
- If you're doing
in your Model T,
just cooking up to it
and it changes from go
to stop, you're going
to hit something.
You're not going
to make the light.
- By 1920, electric
lights are the norm
on city blocks,
but there are still plenty
of kinks to work out.
- In really busy areas
like Midtown Manhattan,
three story structures are built
in the middle of
the intersection
with the traffic lights atop.
- The early traffic
lights are on posts
that are sort of smack dab
in the middle of the street,
which is great because
it's like in your eye line,
you can't miss it
but also you like
physically can't miss it.
You're like crashing into it
a lot, the placement is poor.
- People are
clipping this thing,
people driving, nobody's
paying attention,
who's fighting with his wife.
Boom, right into
the stupid thing.
And these things are
going down like trees.
It's like timber
down, down, down.
- The timing of
these light changes
are inconsistent
and unpredictable.
They're triggered
by an operator.
If the guy doing it snoozes off
or gets distracted,
you don't know
how long you're going to
be waiting at said light.
- Eventually people get
annoyed
and so they start running lights
and you know, there's
some more chaos.
- Even when
lights go automatic,
the problems aren't
slowing down.
Road deaths keep climbing.
And in 1935,
the federal government
standardizes traffic lights.
- The Feds issue
The Manual on Uniform
Traffic Control Devices
for Streets and Highways.
It standardizes the
traffic signal language
across the country.
Red on top for stop, yellow
in the middle for caution,
green on bottom for go.
That is with one exception.
A neighborhood of Syracuse,
New York populated
by Irish immigrants
sees a red above a green
as a symbol of British dominance
then they begin
smashing the red light.
- "You put England over
Ireland?
We will never obey
these laws ever."
You got to appreciate
that sort of moxie.
So what does the government do?
They're like, "All right,
for the Irish people's sake,
we're going to swap it."
- Green is still above red
in a certain
neighborhood in Syracuse.
- Of course, keeping
cars moving was only part
of the challenge.
Sooner or later, all
drivers had to stop for gas.
And there was a time
when getting gas was
less routine errand
and more Russian Roulette.
- In 1859, the American
petroleum business is born
when crude oil is struck in
Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Jump ahead 40 years to the
start of the 20th century
and everything changes.
The ascent of the automobile
with its gas burning engine
suddenly makes gasoline
a hot commodity.
Now the question becomes, how
do you get gas into the car?
- In the beginning,
fueling up is very DIY.
Fuel is kept in these big
tanks at hardware stores
or at these depots
at the edge of town.
You take your
canister, fill that up
and you pour it in by hand.
- Back then, cars didn't
have a fuel gauge in them
and what that led to was a
lot of people ran out of gas.
You would never be able to tell
whether or not you're
running on a full tank
or if you're about
to be on foot.
- By 1910, a
more high-tech solution
becomes widespread,
the gas pump.
- The pumps have the
gas stored underground
and the driver uses a crank
to move the gas up through
a hose and into the car.
Compared to sloshing
around jugs of gasoline,
these pumps are neat,
tidy, and efficient.
- The gas pump is
such a breakthrough
that cities begin
putting them all over.
But American cities
in the 1910s and 20s are
actually really bad places
for these things.
- Initially, the pumps
were placed roadside
right on the curb
like a mailbox.
And so the driver would
pull up to fill their tank.
Cars would pile up behind them.
The other drivers would
have to swerve around.
It just creates a big mess.
- And let's say a driver
accidentally bumps
into the gas pump.
It's what happens
after the gas leak
that you need to worry about.
- A few teaspoons of liquid
gasoline becomes liters
of gasoline vapor and
it's denser than air,
so there's a layer of gasoline
vapor covering the ground.
- And here's where things
really go sideways.
American cities have
lots and lots of sparks.
- There are streetcars
everywhere raining little hails
of fire whenever
they make a hard turn
and don't forget smoking.
- All it takes is one
spark from a backfiring car,
a cigarette, a streetcar,
and wooh, somebody's
going to get crispy.
- The early 20s are full
of these ridiculously scary
stories of gas pump disasters
like the pipe smoking trucker
who in 1925 accidentally
tossed a lit match
into a puddle of gas.
His pump and three other
pumps nearby exploded together
in a giant wall of flame.
- So as a consequence
of all this chaos,
New York takes on the problem
and in 1923, says
you can't have a pump
on the side of the road.
You have to put it
in a designated lot.
- Once gas pumps are
forced into their own area,
it births a new kind of
business, the gas station.
- And now when you pop
in to get some gas, you're going
to get a snack, a big
fountain beverage,
and probably lotto tickets.
- Today, the only
thing challenging
about filling up your
tank is the cost.
- Today, when there's
road work,
we use reflective
signs, flashing lights,
and bright orange cones to
keep drivers and workers safe
but there was once a time
when road crews used something
else to alert drivers,
and it was kind of a b*mb.
- In 1916, Woodrow
Wilson signs a bill providing
$75 million for paving roads
across the country.
This means that
motorists are going
to encounter road construction
more than they have ever
encountered it before.
And how do you alert motorists
to the presence of
construction teams after dark?
- At first, road crews
improvise
from an unlikely
source, citrus farmers.
Citrus farmers utilize
these metal cans
with an open flame
called smudge pots
to keep their groves
warm at night.
The road workers take
these and repurpose them
as roadway signaling devices.
- They weren't ideal
and that's because all it takes
is a little bit of rainfall
or maybe even a gusting wind
and the smudge pot
will be blown out.
- In 1929, a better
smudge pot emerges in
Toledo, Ohio.
It's made by the Toledo
Pressed Steel Company,
and it's called
the Toledo Torch.
- The design is a sphere
that has a weighted bottom
so it can right itself if
it ever gets tipped over
and it has the wick tucked
inside so it's protected.
And most impressively, it
can burn for about 48 hours.
- Soon, smudge pots
are lighting up detours, digs
and damp pavements
across America.
They remain the standard
throughout the road
building boom
of the 1950s, but
they aren't foolproof.
- The problem is that
they burn at a thousand degrees
and the smoke contains
toxins that are carcinogenic
and sometimes they're close
to a playground of a school.
- So imagine you're a
kid,
you're hanging out
with your friends,
and suddenly you come across
something that looks like this.
- This looks like
something that would blow up
in a Looney Tunes'
character's face,
which means it would be
particularly compelling to steal
and play with,
with your friends.
- It looks like a
fun cartoon b*mb.
- The result is
a series of incidents
that almost seem
like cartoon chaos.
- In 1955, a kid throws
a rock at a pot, hits it,
and it explodes
flames everywhere.
- In 1958, a couple
of kids decide
to roll one like a bowling ball
and it rolls toward one
of the construction trucks
at the site, it gets
lodged underneath the tire
and then sets the
whole thing on fire.
- In 1960, a truck in
Arizona is carrying a load
of 40 of these pots when it
suddenly bursts into flames.
Luckily, the driver
thinks quickly
and drives directly
to a fire station.
As these flare pot accidents
continue to rack up,
the authorities begin
to look for alternatives
and by the 1970s, they find it.
- Eventually,
construction sites settle on
non-hazardous
and non-toxic ways
of alerting traffic to
dangers on the road.
- Smudge pots were just
one roadside hazard
of the last century.
Another was an
iconic ad campaign
that was so captivating drivers
just couldn't look away.
- In 1925, there is a
little shaving cream company
out of Minnesota
and they want to make
a name for themselves,
in particular, a product
they have called Burma-Shave.
- They want to advertise
so they put up billboards all
along the side of the highway
to capitalize on the rise of
the country's auto industry
but they need to stand out
from all the other
billboards popping up
so they try a bold approach.
- The first step pops
up on Minnesota highways
and they have these
cute little rhymes like,
"My job is keeping faces clean
and nobody knows the
stubble I've seen.
Burma-Shave."
- Each billboard is set
about 100 feet apart
and each one has a
single line of a joke.
So you got to read
each billboard
and you got to read
the very last one
if you want the whole
joke plus the punchline.
So that's a lot of time
with your eyes off the road.
- Once you start
reading one of these billboards,
it's almost impossible
to not read to the end.
It's just human nature.
Our brains hate to
leave a task unfinished.
So drivers become
almost hypnotized,
locking their eyes on
the side of the road
instead of in front of them.
- By the late 1930s,
there are 42,000
Burma-Shave signs scattered
across more than 40 states.
- Burma-Shave kind of
owns the marketplace
at the time.
It's just ever present.
People mentioned it constantly
and there were even
references to it in movies.
- They even have a gag
contest.
Rip a fender off your car, mail
it in for a half pound jar.
So you might wreck your car,
but the consolation is you'll
get a free jar of Burma-Shave.
- The thing about
these advertisements is
they were almost too good.
Once you start reading,
you can't stop.
It is like early days
distracted driving.
- In the 1930s, this is
a very risky thing to do.
Roads are becoming
more perilous.
Every time you come
up onto these things,
you increase your chances
of rear-ending a vehicle,
going off the road, going
into oncoming traffic.
I mean, these things
are creating hazards.
- In 1937, the
motor vehicle death rate
hits the highest year on record,
- So the executives at
Burma-Shave feel like they have
to do something to address the
growing dangers of the road,
but their solution is
to keep doing exactly
what they've been doing
but now the signs are
going to be safety themed.
- "Don't take a curve at
We'd hate to lose a customer.
Burma-Shave."
- The signs are
still distracting.
Only now you can read a helpful
message about road safety
before smashing into
the car in front of you.
- Burma-Shave
eventually veers away
from their iconic
roadside signs,
but not for the
reason you'd think.
- Eventually Burma-Shave
loses its dominance,
not because of concerns about
safety and their ad campaign
but because more and more
ad money is going into TV
and into radio.
- The fact that
highways become faster
and faster makes it impossible
to read the jokes
in the same way.
No one's going to slow
down to read a joke anymore
because they got places to be.
- For years, we worried
about distracting billboards
and then came the smartphone.
Some call that progress.
- Driving cross country has
long been a rite of passage
and a chance to experience
our nation's beauty up close
but for the first drivers
who attempted the trip,
it was less about scenery,
more about survival.
- In 1913, some
prominent industry leaders
are celebrating a
brand new milestone.
They are opening
the nation's first
coast to coast highway for cars.
- The route runs 3,400
miles from Times Square
in New York City
to San Francisco,
and it's known as
the Lincoln Highway.
- This is really a
landmark moment for the country.
Previous to this,
the only way you could
get across country was
to get on a slow
and expensive train.
Now for the first time, you
can get into your own vehicle
to drive across the
country without having
to sit in a train car
with dozens of strangers.
- Traffic on the
Lincoln Highway starts slow,
but it eventually surges
to 20,000 cars per year.
- Part of what's
luring drivers is the ads are
saying, "Hey, this is the
best way to travel.
If you want to see the
coast, do it in the luxury
of your own vehicle."
- There's also this idea
that taking the Lincoln
Highway is a patriotic act.
Like America wants you to
take the Lincoln Highway
and prove that we are ready
for the 20th century of travel.
- But when the
motorists actually hit the road,
they find something
very different
than the scenic
joyride they were sold.
- What's sort of
hilarious is that the first clue
that the Lincoln Highway
may not be exactly
what it's marketed as is in
the promotional guide itself.
There's a packing
list of what to bring.
Any potential driver
of the Lincoln Highway should
have been a little suspicious
about the claims
of great luxury.
- They say bring
multiple days of provisions
for food and don't
wear nice shoes.
I'm sorry, what kind
of road is this?
So you want me to bring an axe?
I don't know what
I'm going to dig up
or bury with this shovel, but
also bring three days of food?
This does not sound great.
- On a map, the Lincoln
Highway looks amazing.
It's a nice thick line all
the way from Times Square
all the way across the
country to San Francisco.
In reality, the Lincoln Highway
is nothing more than a bunch
of small roads that are
sort of stitched together
in the imaginations of
the highway builders
to make it a highway.
- The Lincoln Highway
isn't actually a highway at all.
- When it's introduced,
less than half
of the Lincoln Highway
is actually paved.
There are things that are left
over from the 19th century
when Pioneers cross the
American West trying
to get to California.
Old wagon trails that have
been stitched together
and then labeled
the Lincoln Highway.
- Most of the
travelers
that are taking a trip
like this are kind
of your upper echelon.
You know, like they're fancy
and they want some adventure.
What they don't realize
is once they get west
of the Mississippi, the
trip's going to turn a bit.
- Every day is
physically exhausting.
The slightest rain turns
the entire road into mud.
The cars flood as you
try to ford rivers.
The frame is broken or cracked
as you try to climb
up rocky hills.
- If you make it to the
west, you can get lost
in a sandstorm.
On a snowy mountain pass,
you can go right off the road
because there are no guardrails.
You are at the complete
mercy of the elements.
- In 1919, the
Lincoln Highway Association
comes up with an idea to give
the road's reputation a boost.
- A publicity stunt is
staged
in which an army
convoy of 81 vehicles,
including 34 heavy trucks,
will drive to California
on the Lincoln Highway.
The idea here is that
if the Lincoln Highway
can sustain the weight
of a military convoy
weighing 400 tons,
well, it can certainly
handle the weight
of your family in
a four-door sedan
as you journey to California.
- It is not ready.
The US Army actually
has a worse trip
than maybe anybody else.
They get stranded in
quicksand in Nebraska.
They get stopped in
a salt marsh in Utah.
All in all, there are
including concussions
and broken bones.
- By the time that
they finally limp
into San Francisco after
they look less like a
triumphant military force
that's just completed
this epic journey
than something that has just
rolled off of a b*ttlefield.
- So if the Army
can't handle it,
the family car
doesn't have a prayer.
- With all this
exposure, more funding pours in
and by 1935, the
entire route is paved.
- There is one silver lining
which is that one of the people
that participated
was a young officer
named Dwight D. Eisenhower.
And when he becomes president
of the United States,
he will push for
and oversee the passage of
the Interstate Highway Act,
which will build a massive
modern highway system
from coast to coast.
- Next time you're
on a long road trip,
just be glad you don't
need an axe and a shovel.
- They say the road to hell
is paved with good intentions.
Turns out our roads
were once paved
with something a
bit more troubling.
- In the early 1960s,
American automotive culture
is getting very, very cool.
We become sort of the
muscle car country.
They have much bigger engines.
They're much heavier and
that's wreaking havoc
on roads and streets, many of
which were laid decades before
with a much more primitive
and fragile form of asphalt.
- Highway authorities
are looking for a way
to make pavement stronger
and more resilient
so that roads won't need
to be paved as often.
And they hear about
this miracle ingredient,
something that could
prevent potholes
and make road repairs
a thing of the past.
- It's cheap, abundant,
and made of these
super thin fibers
that are flexible and strong.
Mixing just a bit of this stuff
into the asphalt will
make roads more stable
and crack resistant.
- And one of the big
selling points is how easy it is
to work into the existing
process of making asphalt.
They don't need any
special equipment at all.
- The addition
to the asphalt mix calls
for little change in operations.
On the job, the mix requires
no special handling.
- Soon more than 150
highway authorities
across the United
States and Canada start
to use this more resilient
new road surface.
It's spread across cities,
suburbs, and interstates.
- And for drivers,
this is amazing.
Driving on these
new improved roads,
no more potholes,
that is awesome.
- But this powerful
ingredient is more
than it's cracked up to be.
- So the material comes
from this small town
in which it's mined
just over the border
in Canada called Asbestos.
The town is called
Asbestos, Canada
Many, many, many miles of
American road are lined
with this toxic
material, asbestos.
- The thing that makes
asbestos
so valuable to
highway engineers,
its thin, flexible, incredibly
strong fibers, turns out
to also make it super
deadly when it's inhaled.
Those fibers can get stuck
in your lungs and k*ll you.
- At first, there
are no regulations
around working with asbestos.
You don't have to wear a mask.
You don't have to wear gloves.
No protection is
needed whatsoever.
There's a reason why today
asbestos removal workers
are wearing hazmat suits.
It's extremely dangerous.
- It becomes clear in
the 1970s
that working with asbestos
is completely toxic
and these road workers
across the United States
and Canada are bearing
the brunt of the cost
and they're getting really sick.
- And it's not just the
construction workers
that are getting
affected by this.
Over time, wear and tear
of the roads will send these
asbestos fibers into the air
that are then inhaled by
pedestrians and by motorists.
- Driving itself is bad enough.
You're moving at high speeds.
You can have collisions.
It's known to be dangerous,
but now the road
itself is dangerous.
- During the '70s and
'80s,
the federal government
tightens restrictions
around working with asbestos.
So it gets phased out of
road construction altogether.
- Also, the town
of Asbestos, Quebec
ends up renaming itself
to Val-des-Sources
and so far, no toxic
chemicals have been associated
with the term Val-des-Sources.
- It's hard to believe
there was a time when
asbestos wasn't just allowed
to be in our streets,
but celebrated for
being in our streets.
In this 1960s promotional
film, the narrator's asking
what probably seems like a
thoughtful question at the time.
- What will
our present techniques
look like 50 years from now?
- Today, we know the
answer is totally insane.
- Looking back at
life on the open road,
whether we were lining
the highway
with flaming smudge pots,
racing across the country
at breakneck speeds,
or drifting into a
trance behind the wheel,
when we hit the gas, things
didn't always run smoothly,
but that sense of freedom is
what made our hazardous
history worth a few bumps
in the road.
Welcome to our World! Where we serve you cookies to ensure you get the best viewing experience on our site.
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
02x15 - Harrowing Highways
Watch/Buy Amazon
A nostalgic journey through America's past reveals shocking everyday activities and products - from hazardous toys to dangerous household items - that were once normal but are now unthinkable in modern society.
A nostalgic journey through America's past reveals shocking everyday activities and products - from hazardous toys to dangerous household items - that were once normal but are now unthinkable in modern society.