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KF5JRV > TODAY 01.09.18 13:36l 48 Lines 2508 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 19880_KF5JRV
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Sept 01
Path: IW8PGT<IR2UBX<F1OYP<F1OYP<KE0GB<AB0AF<KF5JRV
Sent: 180901/1128Z 19880@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.16
On September 1, 1998, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency
Act of 1991 finally goes into effect. The law required that all cars and
light trucks sold in the United States have air bags on both sides of
the front seat.
Inspired by the inflatable protective covers on Navy torpedoes, an
industrial engineering technician from Pennsylvania named John Hetrick
patented a design for a “safety cushion assembly for automotive
vehiclesö in 1953. The next year, Hetrick sent sketches of his device to
Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, but the automakers never responded.
Inflatable-safety-cushion technology languished until 1965, when Ralph
Nader’s book “Unsafe at Any Speedö speculated that seat belts and air
bags together could prevent thousands of deaths in car accidents.
In 1966, Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Act,
which required automakers to put seat belts, but not air bags, in every
car they built. Unfortunately, the law did not require people to use
their seat belts, and only about 25 percent did. Air bags seemed like
the perfect solution to this problem: They could protect drivers and
passengers in car crashes whether they chose to buckle up or not.
While Ford and GM began to install air bags in some vehicles during the
1970s, some experts began to wonder if they caused more problems than
they solved. When air bags inflated, they could hit people of smaller
stature–and children in particular–so hard that they could be seriously
hurt or even killed. A 1973 study suggested that three-point (lap and
shoulder) seat belts were more effective and less risky than air bags
anyway. But as air-bag technology improved, automakers began to install
them in more and more vehicles, and by the time the 1991 law was passed,
they were a fairly common feature in many cars. Still, the law gave
carmakers time to overhaul their factories if necessary: It did not
require passenger cars to have air bags until after September 1, 1997.
(Truck manufacturers got an extra year to comply with the law).
Researchers estimate that air bags reduce the risk of dying in a head-on
collision by 30 percent, and they agree that the bags have saved more
than 10,000 lives since the late 1980s. (Many of those people were not
wearing seat belts, which experts believe have saved more than 211,000
lives since 1975.) Today, they are standard equipment in almost 100
million cars and trucks.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
email: KF5JRV@ICLOUD.COM
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