Buckle Up

August 29, 1958 – It was on this day that a Swedish engineer named Nils Ivar Bohlin filed a patent application for one of the most important safety devices of all time.

Earlier that year, Bohlin was hired by Volvo as its first “safety engineer.” Before joining the automaker, Bohlin’s work was focused on designing ejection seats for Saab aviation. At the time, lap belts were the only restraints in cars. Many people resisted using them, and those that did sometimes suffered abdominal injuries.

Bohlin knew he had to come up with a simple way of securing the chest and the pelvis. It was important to him that the solution be easy to use, thus ensuring adoption by a skeptical public.

A single strap in a v-shaped configuration that fastened at the hip was the winning design. Volvo first installed the straps in the 1959 PV544 and Amazon models. Crash testing quickly validated the ability of the belts to boost survival rates. To its credit, Volvo kept the patent open in order to allow other automakers to take advantage of the new safety innovation.

The World Health Organization credits the three-point harness with saving over a million lives.