Image via Wikimedia Commons

Since Mary Ward suffered the first recorded road death 157 years ago, car safety features have improved by leaps and bounds. Read about Mary’s life and tragic death in Safety History Part 1.

The Red Flag Act

The very first experimental vehicles, such as the one Mary was thrown from, had no safety features. They lacked even doors or walls to keep the passengers inside the vehicle. Just a few years before Mary’s untimely death, one of the first safety measures for cars became legally mandated in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where Mary was born and would die. This legislation, called the “Locomotives Act 1865” came to be known as the “Red Flag Act” because it mandated that all self-propelled vehicles had a person walking 60 yards ahead of them waving a red flag as a warning of its approach.

The Red Flag Act was immensely unpopular. It limited driving speeds to the walking speed of the flag person. It was so inconvenient that it squashed most public interest or investment in the cars of the day, but was not repealed until 1878.

Drum Brakes

In 1904, Oldsmobile released their Model 6C, in which they replaced traditional band brakes with drum brakes. This marked a significant jump in overall safety. Band brakes had a wide band on the outside of a rotating drum, making the brakes susceptible to the elements. This meant that the brakes frequently got wet or dirty, causing slippage.

The new drum brakes encased the brake band inside the drum, so the braking mechanism was protected from the elements, making it much more reliable. This was a significant innovation for vehicle safety and paved the way for modern brake systems.

Rearview Mirrors

In 1909, Dorothy Levitt, an early racing pioneer, published her book The Woman and the Car, in which she recommended motorists carry a hand mirror so that they could check was happening behind them. For this, she is considered one of the earliest inventors of the rear-view mirror.

Laminated Glass Windshields

As improving vehicle technology allowed cars to drive at higher speeds, wind and debris started becoming a hazard for drivers. Car makers began including glass windshields in their designs, but these would shatter in a crash, causing more harm to occupants and victims.

“In 1919, Henry Ford solved the problem of flying debris by using a new technology founded in France called glass laminating.”

Édouard Bénédictus invented laminated glass when he bonded a layer of cellulose between two panes of glass. The cellulose held the glass together even when it broke, preventing the panes from shattering in a crash or when hit with debris. Henry Ford mandated the use of laminated glass on all his cars in 1919. It would become standard equipment in 1926.

Crumple Zones

Mercedes-Benz automobile engineer Bèla Barènyi first came up with the idea for crumple zones in 1937. Crumple zones absorb crash impact and draw out deceleration, reducing the force applied to the vehicle’s occupants.

“To protect occupants in the event of head-on or rear-end collisions, Barènyi proposed that cars should consist of three cells: a strong, rigid, central cell that would house the driver and passengers, and weaker cells front and back that would absorb the energy of a crash by deforming plastically.”

Crumple zones proved to be one of the most significant safety improvements in vehicle history. Today they are being further improved by modern materials such as carbon fiber.

Seat Belts

Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin invented the modern 3-point seat belt, which came standard on the 1959 Volvo PV544. Volvo released the patent so other manufacturers could implement the improved seat belt design, but the belts were unpopular, despite experts insisting they could save lives. Pushback would continue across North America into the 1980s, when Canada and most American states mandated their use.

In 1869, Mary Ward was thrown from her cousins’ car and killed under its heavy wheels. It took almost 100 years for automotive engineers to invent a safety measure that would have saved Mary’s life. Had her cousins’ car been fitted with seat belts, she likely never would have been thrown from the car that killed her.

Many lives have been lost throughout history in the pursuit of progress. Driving has always been dangerous. Despite myriad advances, it’s still the most dangerous activity most of us undertake daily. It is important to use the safety technology we take for granted by maintaining our vehicles in safe, working order, and buckling up every time we get in a car.

These technologies, which we rarely think about today, would have saved countless lives throughout history if they had been available. Come back next week to read about modern advances in vehicle safety in Safety History Part 3.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_Acts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Curved_Dash

https://web.archive.org/web/20090802145330/http://www.glass.org/consumer/a_windshield.htm

https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/discovery/history-stories/the-fastest-girl-on-earth-trailblazing-dorothy-levitt/

https://digital.caamagazine.com/safety-2026/evolution-of-car-safety-innovations

https://physicstoday.aip.org/opinion/crumple-zones