The first car with seat belts was Volvo PV544. The very first belts have still changed little. Safety belts as they were and remain three -pointing, however, now they have pretendermen, although without them belts with their tasks did perfectly. The history of the car has more than 120 years, most of them people did not have reliable protection in collisions. Statistics data indicate that the security belts over 50 years of their use saved a million human lives, and this is the population of a huge city.
Safety belts in their usual form were invented by Volvo engineer Nils Bolin. Before that, he worked in aviation, was engaged in the development of seats-catapult. He knew at what speed a person when he hit the seat, perfectly represented the consequences of such a pirouet for human health and understood how important it is to solve this problem – holding a person in his place in a car in collisions.
Himself n. Bolin set the task – to construct a device that takes the force of impact on top of the chest and hips – the most durable areas of the human body. The device should be reliable and simple, have adjustments for people with different figures. The work was painstaking, experiments were conducted and samples were tested. The result of hard work was three -point seat belts, experiments showed – they are safe.
A new security device was installed in 1949 for Volvo PV540 cars. They were patented by an open patent so that any automaker could put them for free on their cars. The first attitude to seat belts was skeptical, motorists were strained by the restriction of freedom – after all, the belts tightly covered the body of the driver and passenger. But the inventor was sure that the opinion of people would change over time. He was not mistaken, after five years and passengers, and drivers realized how important the seat belts solve the important problem.
The Volvo company began to install in 1963 on export vehicles belts. Safety belts that appeared on the roads of Europe and the United States were safer, this was reflected in the death and wound of people in an accident. Volvo experts studied the stories of almost 30 thousand traffic accidents. The numbers are a stubborn thing, they argued that the use of seat belts reduces the risk of injuries about 50-60%.
It was clear engineers-automobile engineers: it is necessary to provide this device with all passengers of cars. In 1967, the rear seats of cars began to be equipped in 1967, not as an option, but in standard configuration. Now it’s hard to imagine a car without this necessary device. This plain belt in a collision in a fraction of a second saves people’s lives and health. The French expert of traffic safety, Christian Geondo, clearly, in detail and impartially described the behavior of the human body in a car that was moving at a speed of 80 km/h, after it hit an obstacle, temporary segments in this situation are considered to be thousands of fractions of a second.
After the blow, the bumper is pressed, force is thirty times higher than the mass of the machine, stops it, if a person is not fastened with belts, he continues to move in the cabin at the same speed, along with the seat, the steering wheel is rapidly moving forward, the steering wheel breaks, to this moment overloading to this moment. The car and people reaches 80g. Further, the driver with a force of 9 tons flies onto the instrument shield, pierces the windshield with his head, receiving a deadly injury to the skull. Then the dead driver is thrown back, the car is also slightly fed, not a fastened passenger from the rear seat hits the driver and his chair, also receives mortal injuries.
Shards of glass and pieces of iron fall to the ground, a cloud of dust envelops the place of collision, silence occurs. Only 0.2 seconds pass from the beginning of the collision to this point. Without a doubt, the picture is very terrible, but a paradox: in our country, on machines equipped with seat belts, a huge number of people do not use them; did not change the situation and increased fines for this violation. It turns out that a person, paying off from the inspector, estimates his life at the cost of rollback.
Again, dry statistics say that the use of seat belts by the driver when overturning the machine increases his chances to survive 5 times, with a lateral blow-1.8 times, when the frontal hit is 2.3 times 2.3 times. These figures need to be remembered and practical conclusions from them, for the sake of yourself and your loved ones.
