Was watching National Geographic yesterday with boy boy. It was talking about how safety of automobiles came about.

I realised 3-point seat belts we are having in all our cars now were invented by a Volvo engineer, the late Nils Bohlin, about 50 years ago.

Volvo was the first to put such seat belts as standards for all their cars in the 1950s when people were not concerned about safety (about 30 years before wearing seat belts were compulsory).

During those days, there were much more car accidents on the streets every day than we see every year now. The accidents were terrible.

One of the accidents was having the car smashed into a slow-moving truck at night (remember, during those times, alot of roads did not have lights) and the roof were sliced off together with the top of the skulls of all 3 passengers.

(you can see some of the pics of accidents here: http://moes-garage.spaces.live.com/photos/cns!4FC3316B3CBDCA99!334/)

Yet, people refused to focus more on the safety structures of the cars. They refused to put on seat belts because they found them UGLY!! can you imagine that?? beauty was more impt than their safety!

Scientists first used themselves as guinea pigs to test how much force was needed before different levels of bruises formed, what angle will cause death etc etc.

Then they started to use corpses (yes, corpses but donated corpses. they didn't steal them) as dummies so that they could carry out more drastic experiments.

However, most corpses were old people and bones were brittle; they never "survive" more than 2 "car accidents".

later on, they started to design dummies that imitate real humans.

each dummy cost about 100 thousand in present day.

they came up with air bags at the front, then at the side, to curtains and all around the car.

they have ABS system, infra-red to prevent you from going off lane, detect if you are dozing off, view a long distance in light-deprived roads etc etc.



they keep improving the safety of cars and saved alot of lives. however, with more safety features, people drive even more recklessly.

and so they say:

there are limits to safety technology, but no limits to human stupidity.

If drivers want to throw their lives away, even the best safety feature cant prevent it.

maybe minimise the effect, but still..............

if this goes on, one day, we may not be drivers anymore..

it will be controlled by computers/robots.