Have you ever wondered how seat belts became a motor vehicle’s most critical safety feature? The first seat belt was invented in the late 1800s by an English engineer, Geroge Cayley. He created the seat belt to keep pilots inside their small aircraft. However, the first patented seat belt for cars was made to keep tourists safe in taxis in New York City by Edward J. Calghorn in 1885. The patent described the safety belt as “designed to be applied to the person and provided with hooks and other attachments for securing the person to a fixed object.”
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Several physicians started testing seat belts in the mid-1930s and immediately saw their impact on car accidents. Nash was the first American car manufacturer to offer vehicle seat belt options in 1949. However, it wasn’t until the late 1950s that a neurologist named Dr. C. Hunter Sheldon proposed the idea of retractable seat belts after seeing a high number of head injuries from car accidents. Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966, requiring certain safety features in all cars.
Seat Belts Today
In 2017, an estimated 14,955 people were saved from car accidents by wearing seat belts in the United States. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that 37,133 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes. Of those killed, 47% were not wearing seat belts.
Wearing a seat belt is the most important thing you can do to help protect and save yourself in a car accident. While airbags are also used to help protect you in a car accident, they can seriously injure you or kill you if you are not buckled up properly.
However, wearing a seat belt improperly can be as harmful as not wearing one. Seat belts should be worn across the middle of your chest and rest across your hips because they are parts of the body that can withstand crash forces. It should never sit across your stomach because it could severely damage internal organs if placed there. You should also never put the shoulder strap of the seat belt behind your back or arm, as that could also cause intense damage if you are in an accident.
Call our Sacramento auto accident trial attorneys at Eason & Tambornini, A Law Corporation, today if you were hurt in a car accident and need legal representation.
