NEWSFEATURE:Introduced in 1959, the three-point seatbelt is credited with saving over one million lives. KYLE FORTUNEspeaks to Volvo about its introduction and what's next for safety
OVER ONE million people wouldn’t be with us today if it wasn’t for an invention created by a Volvo engineer 50 years ago this week. The device is the three-point safety belt and the engineer, Nils Bohlin, a man who has not only saved millions of lives, but also reduced the severity of injuries for countless others.
With a background in aeronautical engineering, Bohlin’s expertise was in ejecting people from planes, rather than keeping them secured in cars. Using his knowledge of restraints in aircraft, Nils went about creating the three-point safety belt as we know it today.
His design had four important properties: the system consisted of a lap belt and a diagonal belt; the belts were anchored at a low attachment point beside the seat; the belt geometry formed a V-shape with the point directed toward the floor; and the belt stayed in position and did not move in an impact. In what can only be described as a rare example of corporate selflessness, Volvo’s original patents for the three-point safety belt were left open, the firm wanting other manufacturers to use its design in the interests of saving lives.
Introduced on its 1959 120 (Amazon) and PV544 in Nordic markets, Volvo was the first carmaker to equip its cars with three-point safety belts as standard.
Even today the seatbelt remains the most important safety device in your car, it being identified by German patent registrars as one of the eight patents to have had the greatest human significance during the hundred years from 1885 to 1985.
However, it wasn’t until much more recently that seatbelt usage “caught on” in the US, with less than 20 per cent of car occupants using the device until 1985. Car companies were reticent to remind the public that the car was inherently unsafe, though Robert McNamara – eventually to become president of Ford – bullishly pushed through the adoption of the technology, even at a time when few drivers or passengers chose to use the belts.
Today, seatbelt usage in the US has caught up with Europe and there is hard data to back up the effect of the safety belt on road casualty statistics. In a bid to underline the effectiveness of the belt, Volvo published a study in 1967 using information from 28,000 accidents.
The result was clear, with a 50-60 per cent reduction in casualties; this at a time when some road safety literature suggested that drivers should try to climb into the foot well in the event of an crash.
In the EU in 2005 an approximate 11,700 drivers survived road accidents because they were wearing safety belts, but it’s not enough for Volvo or for Thomas Broberg, senior technical adviser in safety at the Volvo Cars Safety Centre. There are 42,448 road casualties each year in Europe and the World Health Organisation cites figures of 1.2 million deaths worldwide.
“It’s not a problem, it’s an epidemic – 1.2 million fatalities is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Broberg.
Volvo has always been a brand associated with safety, and its 2020 vision underlines just how serious it is in its goals.
“Volvo’s vision is for no one to be killed or injured in a modern Volvo car,” says Broberg.
That might seem like an ambitious – even impossible – goal, but, as Broberg says, “it’s a matter of belief, an ambition, what’s important is us all working towards that common goal”.
The ideal is to have cars that cannot crash, through a number of factors, though Broberg highlights that key to this is the ability of vehicles to communicate with one another.
The technology is already possible. Volvo’s City Safety system creates a car that, while not un-crash-able, will reduce the effects of any impact by recognising a pending impact and preparing the car for it by applying braking force and priming the triggers for the airbags and seatbelt pre-tensioners. Unlike the safety belt of 1959, there’s no open patent.
The level of sophistication of today’s safety equipment in comparison to the relative simplicity of Bohlin’s three-point seatbelt is startling, from traction and braking aids to radars that scan the road ahead and smart keys that won’t let a driver start the car if they’re over a predetermined alcohol limit.
The future holds a more holistic approach, with emphasis on completely avoiding incidents.
Given Broberg’s admission that drivers remain the most difficult part to control and predict, surely a driverless car is the solution? That’s not something he envisages; the removal of responsibility from the driver to the vehicle in its entirety is something no car firm is ever likely to encourage – not least because of the legal issues it would raise.
What is interesting is that, should Volvo’s 2020 vision of an un-crash-able car become reality, the seatbelt might no longer be necessary. It’s unlikely to happen though, the importance of buckling up as crucial today as it ever was. Millions of people owe their lives to a 50-year-old invention, and countless more will be thankful they buckled up before setting off.
Seatbelt Survey
THE ROAD Safety Authority (RSA) published the results of its Annual National Seatbelt Survey on July 30th, indicating that the seatbelt usage rate in Ireland has increased year-on-year, although the wearing of rear seatbelts by adults has reduced.
A total of 16,999 adults and 4,316 schoolchildren were surveyed in 2008, with 89 per cent of adults confirming that they wear seatbelts – the highest figure yet recorded for Ireland. However, adults in the rear of a car were found to use their seatbelts less than in 2007, with a drop of 6 per cent to 78 per cent.
Up 2 per cent on 2007, 90 per cent of drivers now wear their seatbelts. However, Noel Brett, chief executive of the RSA, believes that there is room for improvement: “While it’s encouraging to see adult front seatbelt use increasing and more schoolchildren buckling up, it really is cause for concern when adults continue to sit in the back seat of a car, unbelted.
“In 2007, 18 per cent of all back seat passengers killed weren’t wearing seatbelts. It doesn’t get clearer than that.”