Decades of car safety research have produced innovations such as three-point seat belts, steel body construction, blind spot warning sensors and airbags. | PHOTOS: COURTESY OF STELLANTIS; COURTESY OF VOLVO CARS
The Evolution of Car Safety
Tracing decades of automotive innovations that help keep us safer on the road.
By Graham Heeps
Our cars and trucks are safer than ever, thanks to decades of incremental improvements and groundbreaking innovations. Ever-stronger vehicle structures, safer cabins with seat belts and multiple airbags, and electronic innovations such as anti-lock braking systems (ABS) combine to reduce the risk of injury in the event of a collision, or help you avoid one altogether.
It might seem hard to imagine now, but not every potentially life-saving innovation was welcomed with open arms by most automakers, or even consumers. The additional cost of new safety equipment is always a factor to consider. And it is important to follow a thorough engineering and testing process when making new technologies a legal requirement — however appealing the safety benefits might seem at first glance.
Advocacy organizations such as CAA play an important role in advancing automotive safety, while consumer testing programs like the one administered by Transport Canada help keep safety front-of-mind for automakers and legislators.
In recent years, there has been a shift in focus from passive safety (how the car protects you in a collision) to active safety (preventing the collision in the first place). This has been enabled by advances in sensors and computer processing. Artificial Intelligence promises further improvements: it is already helping automakers arrive more quickly at vehicle designs that perform better in impact testing.
Here’s a closer look at eight key safety innovations from a century-plus of motoring.
Era 1: Early Structure
1900s–1940s
Safety Glass
Safety glass prevents sharp fragments from causing injury in the event of a windshield or other vehicle window shattering. Its two forms are used in different applications. Laminated glass was accidentally invented in the 1900s by French artist and chemist Édouard Bénédictus, who later founded the Triplex glass company. He realized that a plastic sheet bonded between two pieces of glass prevents the glass from shattering on impact. This made the material ideal for windshields. Meanwhile, tempered glass, another early-20th-century invention, uses heat treatment to give shattering glass rounded edges. It’s used for vehicle side and rear windows.
Steel Body Construction
The first horseless carriages were just that: wood-framed bodies skinned in wood or metal (or a wood-and-steel composite) with engines powered by steam, electricity or gasoline. As speeds increased, metal fabrication required advancement, and production became more automated. Steel began to displace wood, improving vehicle durability. In 1914, Dodge was the first to switch to all-steel construction for better strength and uniformity. It was also lighter than composite models and faster to produce. The auto industry’s later shift away from a separate body and chassis — the internal framework or “skeleton” that supports the vehicle’s weight and holds all its major components together — to unibody construction was pioneered by Lancia in the 1920s. It enabled impact forces to be absorbed in a more controlled fashion, and paved the way for specially designed crumple zones that mitigated the impact of a collision.
Era 2: Occupant Protection
1950s–1970s
Three-Point Seat Belt
One of the single greatest advancements in the history of automotive safety was the brainchild of Nils Bohlin, Volvo’s first chief safety engineer in the 1950s. Bohlin’s simple three-point design consisted of a lap belt and a diagonal body belt. He understood that the belt had to absorb force across the pelvis and chest, where the body is strongest, while remaining easy to use and adjust. Three-point belts were standard on the 1959 Volvo PV544, but attempts to introduce them more widely — and persuade their occupants to wear them — continued to face pushback from drivers well into the 1980s, when Alberta became the last Canadian province to mandate their use.
Energy-Absorbing Steering Column
Energy-absorbing (collapsible) steering columns address the risk of chest or head injuries from drivers hitting the column during a collision. A collapsible column was introduced by Mercedes-Benz in 1959. In the late 1960s, U.S. automakers followed, as part of a response to campaigning by American safety advocate Ralph Nader. General Motors’ two-piece column had steel mesh that crumpled under pressure, absorbing energy. Other designs use a pin that breaks under a set force. All cars sold in Canada since 1991 must be designed so that the steering wheel doesn’t get pushed back toward the driver during a front-end collision.
Era 3: Electronic Assistance
1980s–1990s
Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS)
ABS shortens the stopping distance on a slippery surface and enables the driver to retain steering control during emergency stops. By reading wheel-speed sensors and momentarily interrupting the hydraulic pressure to the brakes, the system prevents the wheels from locking up and maximizes braking force. At the same time, the system also enables the car to still change direction — for example, when steering around an obstacle. Pioneered in its modern form at the start of the 1970s, ABS increased in popularity through the 1980s and ’90s before becoming a legal requirement on new cars in Canada in 2012.
Airbags (Driver/Passenger)
A frontal airbag cushions the occupant’s face and head in a forward impact. A sensor triggers it to inflate faster than the blink of an eye. But an airbag is no substitute for a seat belt, as the belt holds the occupant in the correct position to prevent injury when the explosive charge inflates the bag. The earliest models date back to the early 1970s. After decades of development and false starts, driver and passenger airbags finally became common in the 1990s. Today, the requirements of Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (CMVSS) 208 — one of many federal standards with which all new passenger cars in Canada must comply — ensure that airbags perform as they should.
Era 4: Active Safety & Automation
2000s–Present
Electronic Stability Control (ESC)
ESC — also known by acronyms such as ESP, VSC or DSC — is an evolution of the anti-lock braking system. When sensors detect a tire starting to skid, the system applies braking and/or cuts power to the individual wheel until it regains grip. Mercedes-Benz and Bosch started developing ESC in the 1980s, and it appeared on consumer cars for the first time in 1995. Trust in the safety of ESC grew through the years. In 2006, a study by Transport Canada looked at collision data and indicated that there would be at least 225 fewer deaths and 755 fewer people seriously injured on Canadian roads each year if all passenger vehicles were equipped with ESC. Findings from the study were actioned, making it mandatory to have ESC on all new vehicles in Canada since 2012.
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)
ESC was arguably the first of what has become a suite of active safety technologies that intervene to avoid or mitigate collisions, popularly grouped under the ‘ADAS’ banner. They have been made possible by integrating the brakes, stability control and steering with information from optical sensors such as radar and cameras. The latest active safety technologies include adaptive cruise control (ACC), forward collision warning (FCW), automatic emergency braking (AEB), lane departure warning system (LDW), lane keeping assistance (LKA) and blind spot warning (BSW). For more information about these technologies, click here. At the time of writing, most of today’s integrated active safety technologies — aside from ESC — are not legally required in Canada. But they are the foundation for the semi- and fully autonomous systems that, proponents say, could help keep us even safer on the roads in the future.
In the meantime, remember: safety technology is only there to assist us. It’s no substitute for giving the road our full attention. While safety advancements are protecting passengers, the research is clear. The bigger, heavier vehicles of today create risks to those outside the vehicle — such as pedestrians and other vulnerable road users — especially when combined with speeding. The risk of injury and fatalities can be much more severe, for instance, if a large SUV collides with a smaller car, cyclist or pedestrian. These combined factors make the proactive safety features, along with drivers’ continued attention and care, an ongoing and critical priority. For the foreseeable future, we — the drivers — are still in charge of keeping ourselves and other road users safe on the roads. CAA