Who invented the seat belts first

On August 13 th , , Volvo Cars delivered the first ever vehicle with a standard three-point safety belt to a dealership in Sweden.

Sixty years later, the three-point seatbelt format has saved over a million lives globally. In the first half of the 20 th century, safety standards were lax compared to present day. Traffic fatality numbers were much the same as they are today which is frightening considering the number of people on the road was just a fraction of what it is now.

The prevalence of vehicle accidents prompted Volvo to focus on injury prevention. The V-type design was a seemingly obvious innovation and a much safer alternative to the current two-point seatbelt.

Bohlin, a former aviation engineer at Saab who worked on ejector seats, knew an effective belt must absorb force across the body yet be so easy to use even a child could buckle up. His ingenious solution took the form of a combined lap belt with a diagonal belt across the chest. That design meant the belt would remain in place and not shift under a load. According to the latest figures released as part of celebrations surrounding the 50th anniversary of the invention of the three-point seatbelt, it has saved a million lives across the world and prevented even more serious injuries.

Reducing your chance of injury or death by at least 50 percent in the event of a collision, it remains the most successful contribution to safety in the history of motoring. Stafford and Aleksei Leonov shook hands and Douglas Corrigan, the last of the early glory-seeking fliers, takes off from Floyd Bennett field in Brooklyn, New York, on a flight that would finally win him a place in aviation history.

Eleven years earlier, American Charles A. Lindbergh had become an international celebrity Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. Today, Disneyland hosts more than 18 million On July 17, , New York Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio fails to get a hit against the Cleveland Guardians then known as the Cleveland Indians , which brings his historic game hitting streak to an end.

The record run had captivated the country for two months. On July 17, , President Harry S. Truman records his first impressions of Stalin in his diary.

Truman described his initial meeting with the intimidating Soviet leader as cordial. Race car drivers were the first to really wear seat belts to help protect them against serious internal injuries. The real breakthrough with modern seat belts came in when Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point seatbelt.

Up until this point, seat belts in cars were two-point lap belts, which strapped across the body, with the buckle placed over the abdomen. Volvo hired Bohlin in and he designed the seat belts we know today through a three point seat belt that better protects the driver and passenger in an accident.

The three point design was created to help secure both the upper and lower body. Better yet, this seat belt design was simple and effective, leading other car manufacturers to borrow the design. When Bohlin passed away in , Volvo had estimated that the seat belt had saved more than one million lives in the four decades since it was introduced.

Once the idea of safety benefits of seat belts caught on in the U. Auto companies offered seat belts as optional equipment and were even sold at local gas stations. Since , American vehicles are required to have seat belts in their cars. As such, by , most first-world countries had a seat belt requirement in their cars. Once they became more common in cars, laws soon followed afterwards.

In the U. Though they were required by law to be in cars, wearing seat belt laws were a different story.