This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Follow us on Twitter for more information on our products.

“Drive safely.”

That wasn’t clever or effective.

Would there really be so many explosions? I guess if the logging truck’s gas tanks were full, maybe, but still it seemed like a lot more than I’ve seen in real-life crashes.

At least nobody caused these accidents by talking on a cellphone. ;-)

Bit over the top yeh?

Must be a slow day in the office at 37S.

bad day, jason?

I wish I hadn’t watched that.

Yeah, all that death and suffering was totally awesome!

That was from the movie “Final Destination 2” Or maybe it was the first one. I can’t remember there was like 5 of them so far. I lost interest a long time ago.

Well, that was a waste of three and a half minutes. Wasn’t that from one of the Final Destination movies?

Thats from the first Final Destination

Let’s add value. Thank you.

This one is a lot more realistic (and imho more impressive): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I54mlK0kVw

No, I’m wrong, it was the second one. The first one was the plane

All b/c someone was TXT ’ing while driving?

The most amazing car crash evah came from Final Destination 2???

The reason I dislike movies like that is because I buy into the illusion and am naturally empathetic. Therefore, it’s unpleasant to see people liquified, crushed, decapitated, burned, cut, terrified, suffering, etc..

When there’s a payoff or a lesson, fine. Means to an end and, when done tastefully, it’s usually commensurate with the lesson and overshadowed by the bigger picture. When it feeds the sick desire to see carnage as an end in and of itself, I find it depressing.

Apart from that, I appreciate the skill that went into making that shot. It’s spectacular. Just to be clear, I understand how you were seeing it and why you shared it.

But the technique was overshadowed for me by the cinema of it. I imagine others above feel the same way.

Yet another reason to outlaw wood from the freeways

I had no idea there were trees still being logged with trunks that large. Should have used better chains.

That was horrific and should come with a disclaimer.

In the less is more category, I’ll propose that the accident in Adaptation is loads more cinematic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfn0QVwZE-A

Also really wished I hadn’t watched it (I cut out about 3/4 of the way through, but not before seeing some gore that will stick in my head for a while).

Well done video, but way over the top on the explosions. Cars only explode at that frequency in movies. It’s actually very difficult to get a vehicle to explode, at least according to MythBusters…

Thanks, that ruined my day.

Hey, are you going to Burning Man this year? Sorry… I couldn’t help myself.

Watching people die is awesome, thanks Jason!

Basically death porn. Stay classy, Jason.

Let’s add a new rule: “We’d rather not moderate, but off-topic, blatantly useless, or otherwise inappropriate or vapid blog entries may be removed. Repeat offenders will be banned from posting to the blog.”

ugh

Drive Safe? The ONLY mistake in this entire video is the jackass that tied up his logs. Oh, and that guy with the coffee—but the log had his name on it regardless :)

And yes, it should be “Drive Safely.” Adverbs people, adverbs.

moral of the story: any asshole can drive a logging truck, but it takes a real man of genius to properly secure his load.

Er, yeah, I’m kinda on the side of many other people here in thinking that this maybe wasn’t the best choice for an SvN post. To be clear, I don’t mind it that much myself. Heck, I’ll watch movies like this while eating dinner, and I’m fortunate enough to never have been involved in a terrible car accident (I did lose a cousin to driving though; a solo-accident). Point is, I do kinda get why some might not be that happy about it.

My question is rather what exactly posting this video says about 37signals. When I read the title, I imagined it to be slow-motion shots of stunts cars gracefully spinning through the air, while “The Blue Danube” is playing the background. Sure, they took some care when composing each shot, and I know you guys at 37signals appreciate craftmanship, but as someone said: It’s basically death porn.

And yes, people should drive safely, but it’s also true that this ever-so-cinematic-if-gruesome scene was caused by the logging truck; not by people who were driving too fast without wearing seatbelts while twittering about how drunk they are. As Chuck said, pretty pointless apart from the gore; the point seemed to be to make it horrible for the sake of horribleness. If you want gore and a message, the British one sborsje linked to is better.

I’m not advocating extreme censorship or anything. I generally think that especially the US is waaay too uptight about what might be “offensive”. So although this video is indeed pretty bad, you’re free to post it of course; it’s your blog. I just can’t exactly figure out why you’d do so, or what you expected the response to be.

Lastly: No, cars do not blow up on impact. It doesn’t work that way.

Great sequence, but why does every car have to explode at the slightest touch? Makes me think I should slam the doors, just in case.

Yes, this was stupid. Probably the most pointless, gratuitous post ever made here. What the hell are you thinking?

And I have to agree with Travis – there was almost nothing in here that points to NOT driving safe. Even the log falling off is a freak accident that has nothing to do with driving safe (except perhaps the load should have had redundant security). Stupid times two. But then what do you expect from the government?

Did the next scene have a meteor slam into the crash site and kill the rest of the world? Seems like it was headed toward total extinction.

cars do not blow up on impact. It doesn’t work that way.

lol, cars don’t blow up prior to impact either!

Noise, definitely not signal.

TRWTF is the modern New York license plate. Anyone old enough to remember those cars and hairstyles will also remember that New York license plates were blue-on-orange.

Also too, everything everyone else said.

Ugh Terminal Velocity.. man that movie was crap! I submit that the freeway scene in the second matrix film was the most cinematic car chase/crash ever. It made that film worth sitting through.

Are you trying to say something about the Massachusetts Senate race?

For style and taste it has to be the Steve McQueen chase/crash in Bullitt.

@Jim Jeffers: Yeah, the freeway scene in Matrix Reloaded is pretty good. They just take it a bit too far at the end, I think. Before that, though, it’s pretty neat. And definitely cinematic.

I’d also like to submit this clip: Taxi 2 – Escaping (YouTube)
Disclaimer: This clip is the exact opposite of what Jason posted; it’s from a comedy. (It might actually help to exorcise the nastiness of Jason’s clip.) It’s from the French film “Taxi 2” and it throws logic, realism and shock out the window in favour of comedy and some really neat stunt driving. It’s all completely ridiculous, and just meant to be fun. As for crashes, it’s features plenty of those, including a (literal) pile-up of 20 little Parisian police cars (about 5:10 into the clip) in which no one gets hurt and there are zero gratuitous explosions.
Oh, and the soundtracks pretty good too.

That’s not how you develop/keep an audience. Perhaps I won’t buy Rework.

It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.

Hit it.

disgusting

@Daniel Thanks for the clip. I’ve almost forgotten the image of the giant log liquefying the cop’s face. Cars on train tracks is way easier to look at. :)

Mark S – That’s a really arrogant statement. I guess you have a lot of experience in this field of developing an audience?

Apparently a lot of people commenting here think that 37s owes us something on this blog? Very strange.

Tomorrow on SvN: The Most Amazing Cinematic Kittens in a Trash Compactor Ever!

@Eliot – I think they owe their audience accurate descriptions of the content they post. The current warning should have been on the initial post.

I am a customer. I use 37 Signal products, buy their content, and spread the word about their business insights. I have a trust for the stuff they post, and this does not fit into their brand equity. It just seems odd to post such a disturbing video. I prefer the days where they bring awareness to Saddleback leather or their Billion dollar valuation not gruesome death. I would subscribe to other blogs if thats what i wanted.

Noticed you added the disclaimer.

If you had put it up earlier, I wouldn’t have watched it. There are other places where such stuff is posted by the bucketfuls. And I notice the disclaimer to this comment box mentioning “Let’s add value.” That is a good way of putting what I had expected when I chose to watch the video.

You guys really need to buy european cars. Ours don’t explode in a crash ! ;-)

Impressive video.

The RSS feed didn’t contain the “Warning: this video is gruesome” bit. What a horrible thing to watch first thing in the morning.

Bad choice, guys——really?

I’m truly disappointed in this post, especially without a disclaimer of some sort. I’ve been reading your stuff for a long time, and most of it has been great, but I just unsubscribed from your feed.

Bunch of uptight people around here today…

I thought it was a pretty bad video; the explosions and flipping 28 times just don’t happen in real life. But taking such offense? Calm down folks, maybe switch to decaf? If the blogger found it interesting, its their site to post it on.

I’m truly disappointed by some of the comments in this thread, especially without a disclaimer of some sort. I’ve been reading your stuff for a long time, and almost all of it has been great, but I will continue to subscribe because I am not so easily offended by seeing one video with a disclaimer that I can cease watching at any point.

Are you guys seriously critiquing the believability of a C+ horror movie? Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that the souls of serial killers can’t inhabit a snowman and run amuck in a small New England town. The whole point of the movie is to make increasingly absurd and grandiose death scenes for the characters who “cheated death.” Believability doesn’t even enter into it.

That being said, I do agree that posting a scene from a horror movie on the company blog may not have been the best choice. It didn’t bother me personally and it was probably obvious to Jason that it was a clip from a familiar movie so he has that context to rely on. But without the context it looked like a public service announcement, which is probably why so many people were looking for it to say something.

I was one of those that saw this first thing in the morning without the disclaimer. It left me with an evil feeling in the pit of my stomach, and that after only seeing the first death and turning it off. Please don’t let this happen again. I normally find your blog ennobling and empowering, but was disturbed enough with this post to be commenting the day after. If this is a harbinger of things to come, just let me know and I’ll read elsewhere.

Post what you want 37S, but I regret watching this.

@JT I started watching the video from the original post before a disclaimer was added.

Let me first say that Jason obviously has every right to post whatever he wants on the svn blog, and he’s not obligated to post disclaimers if he doesn’t want to. A strong, unique viewpoint is what makes svn what it is, so if this video is part of that for Jason, that’s great. I have no problem with that.

But likewise, I have the option to stop following a blog when I’m not into the content being posted. I just thought I’d extend 37s the courtesy of letting them know what might cause a long time reader to drop off.

@Sean McC: Glad I could help :-)
The whole movie is like that, by the way: Completely ridiculous. It gets to be a bit much actually, but if you’ve got the opportunity to see it some day then go for it; it’s still quite entertaining.

@Grover Saunders:

Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that the souls of serial killers can’t inhabit a snowman and run amuck in a small New England town

(just trying to lighten the mood a little)

While I wouldn’t be bothered by this content (since it is fiction) in its correct context, I find it very misplaced here.

@Anonymous Howard: Yes, it is 37signals (especially JF and DHH ) blog to do whatever the heck they want with. I think some people (myself included) has come to expect a certain quality to the posts here (though the bar has been lowered recently) and don’t think that this is something that belongs here.

@Grover Saunders: The quality of the clip is not under dispute. The smartness of Jason to post it here is.

(On a side note, I had expected something like this, mostly because I misunderstood ‘cinematic’ in the title. Non-native English speaker..)

I just decided to unsubscribe this feed…

I didn’t expect to see something like this posted here. I’m usually pointed in an interesting direction when I follow links on SvN, but this one seems out of place. I’m not going to wave my hands and talk about unsubscribing, because I won’t, but I hope this post remains unique and not indicative of future posts.

Well Jason, you certainly got some attention.

I too was misled into expecting The Third & The Seventh of car crashes (whatever that would be!), and I would not have watched this if the disclaimer had been present initially. That’s the only mistake Jason has made here.

I don’t have much to add, except to agree that watching this was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. This was before the warning was added. Because it was posted by Jason Fried, who I have some trust in, I thought that there must be some redeeming value if I could endure till the end. But there was not.

From a company that promotes being straight with their customers I am truly surprised that no one from 37s has weighed in here or even offered an apology for those that were offended. Just the random appearance of a warning note for future readers.

How’s that for connecting with your audience…

This kind of senseless gore and death really pisses me off, I can’t understand how anyone would enjoy watching this. Basically tricking me into having these images burned into my brain is seriously poor judgement from you guys.

I did see that there’s a disclaimer now, but that’s too little, too late. An apology would be nice. It’s your blog, you can post whatever the hell you want, but if you keep posting crap like this, don’t expect that I’ll be reading it.

Classic.

People who clicked on a movie to watch a CAR CRASH are offended by what can happen in a car crash! IT”S A CAR CRASH ! Who drives cars? Robots? People drive cars. If they crash, people can be hurt or killed.

Is it extreme? Yup. But seen any war, action, hero, gang, thriller, Jason Borne movies lately? Do you write the movie theater a letter too?

Get over yourselves.

@Anonymous Coward Funny, because the clip I clicked also had the words ‘amazing’ and ‘cinematic.’

Stop being so melodramatic people. I mean, I didn’t like the clip either (gave up about half way through it when it became clear what it was), but I won’t be unsubscribing or anything that ridiculous.

Don’t really undestand the point of posting the clip of course, and don’t think it was particularly well made either. Unreal, unnecessary, and probably one of the clearest examples of “death porn” that I’ve seen in recent films. Pathetic, pointless gory visuals in which the whole point seems to be to fetishise unpleasant violence. Sick.

That said, no criticism on 37S for it. Am wondering what the point was though…

SvN is typically a great resource for business and inspiration. I don’t understand how this video adds value of any kind.

Wow. People sure a fired up about fake death.

heard … loud and clear.

wow… this is rather ironic in a blog titled signals vs. noise…

My god people like to whinge at any old little thing, harden the f**k up!

Stop watching if it gets too much for you and move on.

The only good thing to come out of this post was finding “The Third and the Seventh” video link. Simply amazing! I am nearly speechless after watching that. Thank you for posting Brandan L.

Man, that post was completely unnecessary. WTF ? On this blog? I come here for interesting insights on design and coding.

This post is bullshit

A design and usability blog: Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals). Hmm, this was post about design or usability? I am not sure

I’d say, a bit over the top : ) But still, great effects on the falling trees!

I remember seeing this in Final Destination 1/2/5 whatever. It did actually stand out as a really well filmed scene in an otherwise blah movie.