Happy birthday Nils Bohlin! You most likely don’t know his name, but you probably use his invention daily. He invented the three-point lap and shoulder seatbelt! He started his career working for Saab as an aircraft designer, helping develop ejection seats. He was hired by Volvo in 1958 as their first chief safety engineer. Bohlin worked with more elaborate 4-point harnesses in airplanes, but knew this wouldn’t really work in a car. While designing the new seatbelt, he focused on a method to protect drivers and passengers from the rapid deceleration that happened during a car crash. He worked on the project for about a year, introducing it to Volvo in 1959 and receiving his first patent. Volvo then did something unheard of – they gave away the patent for the seatbelt to other car manufacturers for free in the interest of safety.
Before 1959, the only people who regularly used seatbelts were race car drivers. Nash was the first American car manufacturer to offer seatbelts as a factor option in its 1949 models. However, they were met with resistance by consumers who did not want them and requested dealers remove them. Ford also offered seatbelts as an option in 1955, but only 2% of buyers chose to pay for them in 1956.
The first federal seatbelt law took effect on January 1, 1968. It required all vehicles (except buses) to be fitted with seatbelts in all designated seating positions. Mandatory seatbelt laws started being introduced in the 1980s and were met with quite a bit of resistance. Some people went to court to challenge the laws, and some even cut the seatbelts right out of their car! New York was the first state to require vehicle occupants to wear seatbelts in 1984. New Hampshire is the only state where there’s no law requiring adults to wear seatbelts.
The government and car manufacturers have used crash test dummies since the late 1940s to test and improve vehicle safety. Before crash test dummies, car companies tested using human cadavers, animals (like pigs, bears, and chimpanzees!), and live volunteers. In the early 1980s, less than 20% of Americans reported wearing seatbelts. So a new PSA campaign launched in 1985 aimed at increasing that number. The radio and TV ads featured 2 crash test dummies, named Vince and Larry, with the tagline “You could learn a lot from a dummy”. It was extremely effective – by the time the campaign ended in 1998, around 70% of vehicle occupants used their seatbelts. Today, nationwide use of seatbelts is about 92%.
At the time of Bohlin’s death in 2002, Volvo estimated that his invention had saved more than a million lives in the 4 decades since it was introduced. According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, seatbelts save about 15,000 lives every year.
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