Safety first: Life saving features of mid-century Chevys and Fords

I do not know how many times I have heard or read that cars of the 1950s and 1960s were unsafe, and that the auto manufacturers did not care about safety then. These claims are not based upon the realities of the times. Auto manufacturers did, indeed, give thought to safety during this period, as explained in the following article.

Even as far back as the 1930s, the matter of safety was considered; hydraulic brakes and safety glass, as just two examples. Of course, what was safety-orientated several decades ago is much less sophisticated than what we have today. One must take into account the available technology and the attitude of drivers during that era, rather than to make the claim that safety was of no interest to auto manufacturers.

Still, the belief manufacturers were not interested in safety persists, and the reason for this may be a point made by a reader of an article published in Car & Driver in 2017 about cars of 60 years ago being unsafe. His response to the story was, “America has a habit of using modern experience, knowledge, and technology to judge yesterday.” One of the arguments made by the writer of the story was that narrow windshield posts used on cars with a wraparound windshield did not provide any serious protection in a roll-over accident. In other words, the posts would collapse. However, the idea behind thin roof pillars was to minimize blind spots for the driver for the sake of safety.

General Motors’ Vice President of Styling Harley Earl brought forth the wraparound windshield. He was very interested in finding ways of increasing glass area and minimizing obstructions to viewing traffic.

Another aspect of safety in automobiles was car buyers’ attitudes as well as understanding of the value of safety devices such as seat belts. Promoting safety simply did not boost auto sales. Ford Motor Co. tried promoting its “Lifeguard” option (seat belts and padded dash), which made its debut for the 1956 model year. Also that year, Chevrolet made seat belts and a padded dash available as separate options, but without particularly heavy promotion.

Indeed, some executives at the time felt offering seat belts suggested to the public their company’s cars and trucks were not safe. And there were some drivers who were not convinced of their value in protecting occupants of automobiles. They noted the device could be the source of injuries, and that an unconscious person in a vehicle that caught fire after an accident could be more difficult to extract by rescue personnel. There was also the belief by some that seat belts in convertibles were dangerous—that an occupant had a better chance if thrown clear of the car. Even European auto manufacturers supported that view. Despite what seems to be an obviously foolish thought, the idea was based upon instances of people surviving accidents, because they were thrown clear of a tumbling car. The flaw in the evidence was that those instances were not typical outcomes. Others pointed to relatively minor accidents in which the front seat occupants were killed because they struck the dash and windshield, as well as accidents in which the doors popped open during a crash, causing passengers to be thrown out of the vehicle with fatal results. A research group at Cornell University found that passengers thrown from an automobile were, indeed, more likely to receive greater injury, or be killed, than those who stayed inside. In the end, the conclusion from all the discussion and research was that seat belts, when properly designed and used, either mitigate or prevent injuries and prevent deaths in some types of accidents, yet they were absolutely useless in other accidents. Some experts estimated that seat belts would save somewhere between 62 and 84 of every 100 motorists who would otherwise be killed.

While the seat belt looks simplistic, it required considerable research to design one for the automobile. To do what it was intended to do, the seatbelt had to be properly designed. Everything involved had to be carefully considered—matters such as the belt material, the anchoring bracket, anchoring points, the buckles, etc.—and developed. Examples of the design criteria include the anchoring bracket through which the seat belt webbing was laced. It had to have slots free of sharp edges and burrs to prevent cutting of the webbing under high-load conditions. Belts attached to the vehicle flooring required at least 5/16-inch, heat-treated mounting bolts along with 2-1/2–inch washers to spread the load over a large area to prevent the mounting bolts from pulling through the flooring. Furthermore, the seat belt release was required to be easily operated with a light pull from one hand, even with the occupant suspended upside down.

Beginning in 1950, Nash became the first auto manufacturer to offer seat belts. (Surprisingly, seat belts were recommended for cars in the 1930s by several U.S. physicians who equipped their cars with lap belts and begin urging manufacturers to provide them in all new cars according to the website, autosafety.org.) Lap belts were introduced as extra-cost equipment for 1956 not only by Ford, but also by Chrysler Corp. and GM.

GM spent two years developing seat belts before offering them as an option in 1956. At the time, automobile safety was quickly becoming a subject of interest of the federal government. In fact, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill in mid-1955 which would have required seat belts to be mandatory in vehicles used for interstate commerce, but it failed to pass. The state of California passed a law requiring seat belts to conform to aircraft standards set by the Civil Aeronautics Authority (now the FAA). Furthermore, numerous aftermarket seat belts were available through a variety of sources. Additionally, 23 states had passed a law that became effective on Jan. 1, 1964, requiring lap belt anchors to be provided for autos. Seat belts became mandatory equipment for all automobiles (except buses) starting Jan. 1, 1968, though auto makers began making them standard prior to the 1968 model year. Still, car owners were not especially likely to use them. A typical excuse for not wearing them was the fear of being somehow trapped by them after a crash resulting in a fire.

Introduced for 1967 was the collapsible steering column. In a major head-on or near-head-on crash, the collapsible steering column could no longer be driven into the driver’s body. The feature became mandatory the following year, so auto manufacturers were a year ahead of the mandate. Incidentally, though the collapsible steering column was newly introduced, it had actually been invented in 1934. However, auto makers did not soon adopt them, because they were complex to manufacture, were more prone to mechanical failure, and were more costly to replace in the event of damage. In the depression-plagued 1930s, anything that added to the cost of the car was undesirable to manufacturers, because it was undesirable to the buyer.

For the 1956 model year, Robert McNamara, Ford’s general manager, decided to emphasize safety features under the banner “Lifeguard Design.” Some of the Lifeguard features were standard and others composed an option group. The Lifeguard equipment resulted from a two-year study conducted by Ford Motor Co. in cooperation with Cornell Medical College, the American College of Surgeons, the National Safety Council and other groups. Test crashes were conducted with crash-test dummies, and instrumentation and cameras recorded the reactions of the “occupants” and the behavior of the test car. As a result of these tests, the steering post was recessed from the steering wheel a little more than 3 inches and the steering wheel itself was designed to bend away from the driver. Furthermore, the door latches were redesigned to reduce the possibility of doors opening during a collision. The double-grip door latch employed an interlocking striker plate made of high-tensile chrome-molybdenum steel to overlap the door latch rotor. The inside rear-view mirror was given a special backing to prevent the glass from shattering, too. Optional safety equipment was composed of webbed nylon seat belts plus a padded dash and sunvisors.

Part of the promotion included showing the test films of crash test dummies slamming into the windshield with the implication being that Ford’s safety equipment could prevent drivers and passengers from being killed or seriously injured. The effort was futile. Despite the improved safety offered, few people ordered the Lifeguard package. Even so, Ford continued to offer the optional safety equipment all the way up to the point when the federal government made the equipment mandatory.

Though Ford Motor Co. had met the federal safety regulations for 1967, it went beyond them with additional safety features that year. These included shoulder belts and front seat headrests as dealer-installed accessories. Incidentally, the shoulder harnesses required the purchase of the extra-cost deluxe belts, which had a central push-button buckle release rather than the lift-up design of the standard units.

In addition to mandatory seat belts for front and rear seat occupants and the padded dash, new safety items also included a dual-reservoir master cylinder that featured separate reservoirs between the front and rear brake systems. Therefore, a loss of hydraulic fluid would likely be limited to one brake system and not both, preventing total brake failure as could happen with the previous single reservoir design. Incidentally, this brake system had originated as standard equipment on Cadillacs in 1962, but was not featured on all GM products.

FoMoCo’s Lifeguard option is much more well-known to collectors of 1950s Fords, but lesser known is that, at the same time, Chevrolet not only offered lap belts, but also shoulder harnesses for the front and rear passengers in addition to a padded dash. At least one 1956 Chevrolet—a Bel Air two-door hardtop with the special-order, dual-quad 225-hp Corvette engine—was equipped with the optional front shoulder harnesses. (This car still exists.) Despite their availability, even Chevrolet’s deluxe prestige brochure did not mention this optional equipment. Though seat belts remained an option on Chevys until mandated as standard equipment by the federal government, they became standard for the Corvette sports car beginning with the 1959 model.

Additionally, in the next decade, the adjustable headrest was introduced. Headrests had been an option for various GM cars as far back as 1966 before becoming standard equipment on passenger cars by federal mandate beginning on Feb. 1, 1968.

Chrysler Corp. began offering a padded dash for 1949 and lap belts for 1956. The latter, though, was not noted in its dealer sales brochures, probably because of the common fear of implying its cars were unsafe. Unlike the seat belts, a padded steering wheel was advertised as an option in dealer brochures starting with the 1959 Chrysler models (except for the Windsor).

American Motors Corp. offered at extra-cost child safety locks for the rear doors of its four-door models (an option later adopted by other manufacturers), seat belts (dealer-installed) and a padded dash in the latter 1950s. Headrests were added as an option beginning with AMC’s 1966 cars.

Safety is a relative matter. Auto accidents simply cannot be totally safe due to an infinite number of variables. Safe driving habits are highly effective at preventing them, and no high-tech gadget can force drivers to drive safely. Many advancements, though, have been made over the past several decades, such as anti-lock brakes, air bags, back-up cameras, the lane keeper, etc. There is a downside to some of this, and that is that drivers can get the impression they do not have to pay as much attention to their driving because of these features, something that is simply not true.

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