Auto Safety Features

There’s something inherently dangerous about getting into a couple tons of steel propelled by exploding gasoline and speeding down the road at 65 miles per hour. It’s easy to forget the actual details of driving an automobile, since many of us do it every day of our lives. We’re immune to the scariness that driving would have presented to our ancestors. It’s become mundane.

This may help to explain why there are so many automobile accidents each year. Auto accidents claimed 37,261 lives in the United States in 2008, with an additional 3 million people injured, for a total cost of $164.2 billion, according to the American Automobile Association. Those aren’t numbers you can ignore. You owe it to yourself, to loved ones, and even to the American taxpayer to drive carefully and take advantage of the modern safety features afforded by today’s cars.

Modern Safety Equipment

Safety equipment has come a long way in the past 60 years. It’s funny to see cars from the 1950s, with bench seats in the back, no seat belts, and a generally cavalier attitude about the safety of the passengers of the car. Today, the following safety features are standard:

• Seat belts. The Ford Motor Company released the first three-point safety belt, and it’s set the gold standard for automobile safety features, having saved countless lives over the years. Reports estimate that about half of all American auto fatalities could have been prevented had the victims worn their seat belts.
• Crumple zones. One of the biggest developments in auto safety in the past few decades was changing the rigid skeletons of the automobile in favor of a flexible, crunchable frame that would protect passengers in the event of an accident by absorbing the bulk of the collision.
• Airbags. The airbag first debuted in the mid 1970s. Originally considered to be as potentially dangerous as it was potentially life-saving, the kinks have been ironed out significantly over the years. The safest cars now often feature side- and curtain-airbags throughout the vehicle, protecting the passengers as well as the driver from many angles of collision.

These safety features have become standard on most cars, and have greatly reduced the incidence of fatalities in car accidents.

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