Educational Videos

Be Safe Be Smart
Bryon's Last Day
The Choice is Yours
Dangerous Crossing: A Second Thought
David's Run
Decide Smart, Arrive Safe
Die Hard if You're Dumb
A Dime To Consider
Emergency Response - Your Safety First
It's Your Call
It's Your Choice
Off Limits: Don't Get Caught Dead In Your Tracks
Open-Captioned Trespass and Crossing Videos
The Responsibility is Ours, Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Awareness/Training For School Bus Drivers
Roll Call: Highway-Rail Crossing Safety
Sleddin' The Right Track
Sly Fox and Birdie
Staying Alert and Alive
Tracks Are For Trains, Not For Kids
The Tracks Can't Watch Your Back
You Can Make A Difference, Too!
Your License Or Your Life

Be Safe Be Smart
(15 min. 1994)
Audience: Ages 7-13
This video was produced by Metra, the commuter rail agency in Northeastern Illinois, to educate children about the potential dangers around railroad tracks and crossings. The video comes with a teacher's guide that provides activities for classroom use. Includes a quiz to reinforce important safety issues.

Bryon's Last Day
(12 min. 1997)
Audience: Middle school-adult
A cast of high school students, along with several professional actors, enact trespass tragedies.

The Choice is Yours
(7 min. 1992)
Audience: Youth-adult
Addresses the trespassing issue in regard to recreational vehicles such as all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles. Emphasis on trespassing being illegal.

Dangerous Crossing: A Second Thought
(14 min. 1994)
Audience: Law enforcement
This video shows the tragic consequences that can result when people fail to yield at railroad crossings. The danger involved is made clearer through the voices of those affected. And, the video offers suggestions for law enforcement officials on ways they can encourage railroad crossing safety and save lives.

David's Run
(15 min. 1987)
Audience: Middle school (grades 4 through 9)
This dramatic video focuses on safety around railroad-highway grade crossings, railroad property and trains.

Decide Smart, Arrive Safe
(18 min. 2005)
Audience: School bus drivers
Includes examples of school bus-train incidents with tips for drivers to avoid similar circumstances. Reviews the “Five Alive” drill to provide a step-by-step safety plan to assist school bus drivers before and after they cross the tracks.

Die Hard if You're Dumb
(12 min. 1998)
Audience: High school (grades 9 through 12)
This video focuses on making teens aware that each year nearly 500 people are killed and another 1,500 are injured seriously in motor vehicle collisions with trains. It stresses the following points:

• Don't disobey the signals and try to beat the train.
• Colliding with a train is the same as your car crushing a soda can.

A Dime To Consider
(10 min. 1982)
Audience: Trucking industry
Stresses that a train "can't stop on a dime," and talks about the necessity of trucking industry and railroad cooperation to curtail disasters involving trucks, especially those carrying hazardous materials.

Emergency Response - Your Safety First
(10 min. 2002)
Audience: EMTs, firefighters, police officers, and all those who respond to emergencies
The purpose of this video is to make emergency medical technicians (EMTs), firefighters and police officers aware of the potential dangers that exist at RR crossings, and the steps to ensure their own safety.

It's Your Call
(11 min. 2000)
Audience: Law Enforcement Officers
Increasing judicial awareness of highway-rail safety.

It's Your Choice
(10 min. 2000)
Audience: Adults
This video is designed to encourage safe behavior at highway-rail grade crossing and to discourage trespassing around railroad property and tracks.

Off Limits: Don't Get Caught Dead In Your Tracks
(12 min. 1995)
Audience: Law enforcement and general public
This video forcefully reenacts four trespassing violations through the eyes of the engineers. Portrayed are a group of teens who drink and then fall asleep on the tracks, a hunter walking along a trestle who narrowly escapes a tragedy, a teenage girl walking on the track who fails to hear the train whistle because she's wearing radio earphones, and two young boys whose minibike gets stuck on the track and who jump clear just in time.

Open-Captioned Trespass and Crossing Videos
(1988)
Audience: All ages
A two-volume set of videos signed for the hearing impaired. One volume contains four videos on crossing safety: Staying Alert and Alive, Why Wait, No Exit, and Paths of Thunder. The other volume contains four trespass videos: Sly Fox and Birdie, Byron's Last Day, David's Run and Off Limits.

The Responsibility is Ours, Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Awareness/Training For School Bus Drivers
(18 min. 1996)
Audience: School bus drivers and transportation and education directors
This video's purpose is to make school bus drivers aware of the potential dangers that exist at railroad-highway grade crossings and the steps to take to ensure the safety of their passengers as well as themselves.

Roll Call: Highway-Rail Crossing Safety
(9 min. 1999)
Audience: Law enforcement
Designed to help increase public awareness through law enforcement at rail grade crossings and along railroad rights-of-way.

Sleddin' The Right Track
(12:30 min. 2000)
Audience: All ages
Safety awareness for snowmobilers of all ages.

Sly Fox and Birdie
(10 min. 1992)
Audience: Grades kindergarten-4
Sly Fox and Birdie were created to provide the enjoyable aspects of a cartoon show, to entertain as well as educate children. This fully animated video will teach children to be extremely cautious around railroad tracks.

Staying Alert and Alive
(12 min. 1991)
Audience: Driver education, adult
This video uses realistic animation video sequences to demonstrate railroad-highway grade crossing collisions and their consequences. It dramatically points out to the viewer the limitations trains have in trying to stop to avoid a collision with a motor vehicle. Also illustrated are the responsibilities of the motor vehicle driver to prevent a collision when approaching a railroad-highway grade crossing.

Tracks Are For Trains, Not For Kids
(8 min. 2001)
Audience: Kindergarten through Grade 4
Three young people and the narrator meet a railroad engineer, a conductor, police officer and school bus driver. All of them show students, "Tracks are for trains, not for kids".

The Tracks Can't Watch Your Back
(12 min. 1994)
Audience: Driver education classes and general public
(open-captioned for hearing impaired)
A reenactment of the final day in the life of a California teenager struck by a train while he was tresspassing on railroad property. The actors are the boy's classmates, and the piece is a memorial to him as well as a warning about tresspassing.

You Can Make A Difference, Too!
(12 min. 2005)
Audience: Adults
An introduction to Operation Lifesaver used for recruitment and orientation of new volunteers.

Your License or Your Life
(10 min. 2000)
Audience: Truck drivers
American Trucking Associations (ATA) partnered with Operation Lifesaver to develop this safety video to alert our nation's truck drivers to new federal penalties for grade crossing violations. Three members of ATA's America's Road Team, professional truck drivers with exceptional safety records, helped host the video and demonstrate several situations that drivers encounter daily. Several serious grade crossing collisions are featured.

Presentations Homepage
Kindergarten - Grade 2 Presentation Overview
Grade 3 - 5 Presentation Overview
Grade 6 - 8 Presentation Overview
General Adult Presentation Overview
How to Become a Presenter