Volvo Invented The Most Important Safety Feature Ever, Then Gave It Away For Free

In 1942, Nils Bohlin joined the Swedish company Saab as an aircraft engineer, developing ejection seats for fighter planes. In 1958, he joined Volvo as a safety systems engineer and began working on a design that is, to this day, considered the most important safety feature in cars: the three-point safety belt.

A year later, and following numerous tests, Bohlin presented his invention to the Volvo management. Later that year, the three-point safety belt became standard fare on the front seats of the Volvo PV544. In an unprecedented move, in the interest of safety, Volvo left the patent open, making it possible for all car companies to use the design for free. The result was the most prolific safety feature in existence, used in every passenger car from the Volvo XC90 to the BMW M5.

Volvo

Volvo is a Swedish automaker owned by Geely since 2010 and headquartered in Gothenburg Sweden. Founded in 1927, it has evolved into a premium automaker renowned for its safety, famously giving away free access to the patent for the three-point seatbelt in 1959, saving countless lives since. Volvo has also continually pushed to include the best safety tech in its cars ahead of time, and set a mission in 2007 that by 2020, no one would be killed or seriously injured in a Volvo. Today, that mission has evolved to avoid all collisions in a Volvo. Volvo was also an early adopter of EV technology and had planned to go all-electric by 2030, but recently pushed back this deadline, instead aiming for a 90-100% electric or plug-in hybrid goal by 2030 instead.

Founded

1927

Founder

Assar Gabrielsson, Gustaf Larsson

Headquarters

Gothenburg, Sweden

Owned By

Geely Holding Group

Current CEO

Martin Lundstedt

Production Status

Available

Expand

How Military Airplanes Inspired The 3-Point Seatbelt’s Creation

The Saab 21A was a fighter plane. In typical Scandinavian left-of-field fashion, the Swedish designers had opted for a monoplane twin-boom design, with an engine mounted on the rear of the fuselage, the propeller pushing the plane forward. This configuration, Saab said, allowed all the weaponry to be fitted in the nose, with no propeller in the way.

Young aircraft engineer Nils Bohlin worked on the Saab 21, focusing on the ejector seat system. The 21A afforded engineers several challenges. Firstly, there was the unconventional engine position, and the small issue of the pilot. When the pilot had to eject in a hurry, he was swept into the propeller by the airflow. This was clearly not high on the pilots’ to-do lists.

So Bohlin and his colleagues (in partnership with another Swedish company called Bofors) came up with an ingenious solution: the explosive ejection seat, a design still in use today in even the most advanced fighter planes.

This explosion sent the seat and pilot up and away from the propeller at great velocity, but to do this, the pilot had to be restrained inside the seat. Bohlin and team began experimenting with different seat belt systems, and it was this experience that he would take to Volvo in 1958.

A Master Of Human Restraint

As a safety engineer, he began experimenting with different restraint systems. Following a year of development and tests, his research concluded that a three-point system, with straps across the chest and hips, was the most practical and safe solution. The three-point set-up absorbed force in the right areas, across the pelvis and chest, where the body is strongest.

Related

The Only Volvo In America To Achieve The IIHS’s Most Coveted Award in 2024

With the IIHS’s criteria stricter than ever, here’s the one Volvo that bagged top honors from the agency in 2024.

Volvo states that the most important properties of the design were that the system consisted of a lap belt and a diagonal belt and that the belt straps were anchored at a low attachment point beside the seat. Also, the belt geometry had to consist of a “V” shape with the point directed to the floor, and the belt had to stay in position and not move under load.

Ease of use was another consideration, and Bohlin’s design ticked that box. The original Volvo design did not have the inertia reels we have today, and the shoulder strap was anchored to a fixed point on the car body. The buckle simply clipped into the anchor point, as they still do today. So no complicated system that requires a ridiculous amount of time to activate.

You get in, pull the strap, and click the buckle into the anchor point. Easy.

The Three-Point Seatbelt Hits The Streets

Volvo management gave Bohlin’s innovation the green light, and the design was patented. On Tuesday, 13 August 1959, a Volvo PV544, the world’s first car fitted with a three-point safety belt system as a standard fitment item, was delivered to a Volvo dealer in the Swedish town of Kristianstad.

And just like that, a basic safety restraint system that can reduce the risk of death or serious injury during an accident by up to 50%, became the biggest game changer in car passenger safety the world has ever seen.

Your changes have been saved

Add CarBuzz to your Google News feed.

A Seatbelt For Me, For You, For Everyone!

Assar Gabrielsson was a former egg seller who became the head sales manager for Swedish ball-bearing giant SKF. Gustaf Larsson was a mechanical engineer with a love for cars, and who had a knack for coming up with engineering solutions. Together the two gentlemen created Volvo in 1927.

Even in the earliest days of the automaker’s existence, they had a clear goal for those who would use the vehicles:

Volvo’s management, with the safety ethos of the company’s founding members in mind, and realizing the impact the design may have on road safety, immediately opened the patent, allowing anyone to access the technical details and copy the design, free of charge.

The design was clearly superior to other two- and three-point designs that had preceded it, and it became a shoo-in for industry-wide adoption. Had Volvo retained the patent design, it could’ve made millions off of licensing the technology to other automakers, but this was a company that cared more for safety than making a quick buck.

Every car now comes standard with a three-point safety belt system, and its impact on road safety – saving millions of lives – is astonishing.

Saving Lives. Millions At A Time.

The early days of the three-point safety belt restraint system were not all plain sailing. Volvo customers, who had no particular love affair with the older generation lap belt systems, viewed the new three-point design with skepticism.

You’d also think that car companies would jump at the chance of tapping into Volvo’s design and fitting the restraint systems into their own cars. All for free. But no.

It required Bohlin to present a detailed research report called ‘28,000 Accident Report’ at a traffic safety conference in the USA in 1967. The report covered detailed accident data from all collisions in Sweden involving Volvo cars, over a period of a year.

Related

Volvo’s Secret Safety Division Are Better Accident Sleuths Than The Feds

There’s a reason Volvo is the safest car company in the world, and we found out why.

The report clearly showed that safety belts saved lives and reduced injuries by 50-60 percent. The numbers don’t lie, and the three-point safety belt system quickly gained traction after that conference. Not only in the USA but around the world.

The Numbers Behind This Life-Saving Technology

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that the three-point safety belt saves the lives of 15,000 people in the USA every year.
• The German patent office considers Bohlin’s three-point safety belt as one of the eight patents that had the greatest importance to humanity since 1885.
• Internationally, it is estimated that more than a million lives have been saved by the three-point seat belt.
• The NHTSA says 374,276 lives were saved in the USA between 1975 and 2017. Half of the passengers who died in car accidents in the USA in 2022 were unrestrained.
• The NHTSA’s research indicates that a record-breaking 91.9 percent of adult front-seat passengers in the USA used their seat belts in 2023 – that is a great result.
• In 2023, 93 percent of occupants in the Northeast used their belts, 92.9 percent of occupants in the Midwest used belts, 96.5% of occupants used belts in the West, and 88.4% in the South.

Keep on Bohlin

Nils Bohlin passed away in 2002 at the age of 82. In a coveted engineering career, he won numerous awards and was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He retired as senior engineer at Volvo in 1985, after spending 27 years working on Volvo’s most significant safety designs.

His three-point safety belt design may seem simple and straightforward, but it was the design’s brilliant geometrical qualities, restraining the human body most effectively in its strongest areas. The design on its own was laudable. That Volvo gave it away for free is nothing short of heroic.

Sources:
Volvo,
NHTSA