Car Safety Project

Bangladeshian · Mar 20, 2007

I need to create a project for drivers education so I decided to create a timeline showing different developments and laws that have made people traveling in cars safer throughout the years. So far I just have the creation of car seats and the new 8 year/80 lb law. Thanks for your help!

skaterbabs · Mar 21, 2007

Chech the NHTSA site, they should have that floating around somewhere.

southpawboston · Mar 21, 2007

some significant milestones in my opinion, would be:

seatbelts (developed by saab? volvo? 40s? 50s? but their use was not made mandatory in the US until the 80s)
energy absorbing bumpers (70s)
crumple zones (70s, 80s)
head restraints (60s, 70s)
collapsible steering columns (70s)
padded dashboards (60s, 70s)
air bags (90s)
safety glass (30s? 40s?)
high-mounted third brake light (1986, to be exact)

notably, all the above design features have become REQUIRED, not optional, in car designs for cars sold in the US.

Momto2whosews · Mar 21, 2007

Not sure if this helps or not, but here is a pictorial of old vs. new models of carseats. Unfortunately, this site won't let you print the pages. But maybe you can do a "print screen" and paste it in as a picture. I hope you're better at that sort of thing than I am.

http://www.carseat.org/Pictorial/0_PicLink.htm

Sounds like a great project BTW!

Momto2whosews · Mar 21, 2007

southpawboston said:
seatbelts (developed by saab? volvo? 40s? 50s? but their use was not made mandatory in the US until the 80s)

Just to clarify, did you mean that they weren't required to be installed in vehicles until the 80's or the US didn't have mandatory seat belt use laws until the 80's? I wasn't paying attention to this stuff back then

and my parents always drove imports so we always had them, but I thought seat belts had to be installed in cars in the 70's - no?

skaterbabs · Mar 21, 2007

exactly, because they were required by law to be in vehicles in the 60s. (64, if memory serves....)

Jeanum · Mar 21, 2007

Momto2whosews said:
Just to clarify, did you mean that they weren't required to be installed in vehicles until the 80's or the US didn't have mandatory seat belt use laws until the 80's? I wasn't paying attention to this stuff back then and my parents always drove imports so we always had them, but I thought seat belts had to be installed in cars in the 70's - no?

Right, seatbelts were mandatory factory installed equipment by the late 1960s/1970 model year in the U.S. if I remember correctly. Mandatory state seatbelt use laws are much more recent as you said, implemented starting in the 1980s in some states.

Momto2whosews · Mar 21, 2007

Yeah, my state still doesn't have a seat belt law for adults

southpawboston · Mar 21, 2007

southpawboston said:
seatbelts (developed by saab? volvo? 40s? 50s? but their use was not made mandatory in the US until the 80s)

i should have been more clear on that... their installation was made mandatory in the 60s or early 70s... but *using* them by occupants of the car did not become mandatory until the 80s.

Victorious4 · Mar 22, 2007

http://www.safeny.com/seat-ndx.htm

In 1984, New York State became the first state to enact a mandatory seat belt law, the law became effective in 1985. New York's seat belt law is a "primary enforcement law". This means that a police officer may stop you for not having a seat belt on.

In 1984, the year the seat belt law was enacted, approximately 16% of individuals wore seat belts. One thousand twelve (1,012) people who were unrestrained died in motor vehicle crashes. In 1985, the year the seat belt law went into effect, the compliance rate was 57%, and unrestrained deaths dropped to 644.

AdventureMom · Mar 22, 2007

Bangladeshian said:
the new 8 year/80 lb law.

Keep in mind that seatbelt laws vary by State...

FYI, there are many sites listing laws by state - here's an example: http://www.elitecarseats.com/custserv/custserv.jsp?pageName=car_seat_laws I'm not sure how current that chart is but you can do a search and find others).

Research FMVSS 208, FMVSS 213, and FMVSS 225 - those are the NHTSA regs pertaining to (in order) seatbelts, child restraints, and LATCH. (Ok, six wks since my course so correct me if I'm wrong...

).

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