The current race to develop autonomous driving technology for the masses has a number of factors behind it. Think about it: no more congestion or traffic jams, less pollution, less stress and a drastic reduction in accidents, meaning more humans will live longer. A utopian dream, you say? It’s nearly a reality for the world’s towns and cities, so we had better get used to the idea because it is going to happen, sooner than we realise.
Conventional cars are dangerous things. Many weigh two tonnes and are capable of whipping down a motorway at more than 300kph with five people on board, so you can imagine the devastating consequences of losing control in one. Manufacturers have, however, been working tirelessly for decades to make their products safer, and many of the myriad safety features we take for granted on modern cars seemed like science fiction only a few years ago.
Here, then, in no particular order, are 10 of the most important safety firsts that greatly reduced the odds of us being killed in our cars. You might not even be aware that your car is fitted with some of these, but be glad it is.
Anti-lock brakes
As anyone who has ever stamped on the anchors while driving an old car will attest, the ability to steer while braking shouldn’t be underestimated. Initially developed for aircraft, anti-lock brakes (ABS) were available in mechanical form on Jensen’s pioneering FF (which also used four-wheel drive), which was introduced in 1966, but the system was unreliable and incredibly expensive. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that dependable electronic ABS was available in mass-produced cars.
Essentially, ABS applies pressure to the brakes – and then releases it – up to 15 times per second, making them practically impossible to lock up, even in extremes. This means the front wheels can still be steered while coming to a stop, making you more likely to drive another day.
Airbags
Supplemental Restraint System: that’s what the SRS letters on your car’s airbags stands for, in case you’re wondering. A car accident in 1952 caused retired engineering technician John W Hetrick to design and patent what he referred to as a “safety cushion” to protect car occupants from bashing their heads on the dashboard in the event of a crash. It wasn’t until 1981, though, that the airbag as we know it was available on a production car, introduced by Mercedes-Benz with its flagship S-Class.
It would be another decade before inexpensive cars were so fitted, and nowadays a serious collision or impact will turn your car’s interior into a veritable bouncy castle, with airbags being deployed all over the place to protect various parts of our anatomies. In 2012, Volvo went a step further and introduced airbags to protect pedestrians.
Four-wheel drive
Four-wheel drive was initially only available in road-legal utilitarian vehicles throughout the first half of the 20th century. It was Jensen’s rakish FF that introduced four-wheel drive to conventional GT cars 50 years ago. By the early 1970s, the feature had started creeping into normal production vehicles, but it wasn’t until Audi brought out its seminal Quattro in 1980 that the world really appreciated what power being sent to all four wheels could achieve.
Nowadays, even Lamborghinis and Ferraris feature it, for the obvious reason that it enables harnessing of stupendous levels of power. In more everyday transportation, it makes for predictable, stable handling and plentiful grip in all sorts of climactic conditions. If you have ever lost the back end of a rear-wheel-drive car in the rain, you will know what a bonus it is to have power going up front, too.
Convertible roll bars
You can’t have escaped noticing that, in the UAE, a fair few cars end up on their roofs during accidents. With much of a car’s structural integrity found within its roof and supporting pillars, there’s often sufficient protection to enable emerging from a rollover without serious injury. But what if there’s no roof to begin with?
Most convertibles are now supplied with roll bars that, in the event of a rollover, deploy from their normal status flush with the bodywork to an extended position that offers incredible rigidity at a height suitable to protect the occupants’ heads. Combined with active seat belts that prevent the occupants sliding out while they’re upside down, these things have made convertible cars almost as safe as their tin-topped brethren.
Carbon fibre
For evidence that racing improves the breed, look no further than the use of carbon fibre in road-car construction. Consider the crash of a Ferrari Enzo in 2006, when a career criminal, Stefan Eriksson, smashed the car into a telephone pole in California. The car was sliced in two, but its carbon-fibre passenger cell remained completely intact and he walked away (albeit subsequently into prison).
Lighter than steel, yet much stronger, the material has revolutionised race-car and supercar manufacture, saving countless lives in the process. Lives such as ex-Formula One driver Robert Kubica, who crashed during the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix at more than 300kph. The car around him was utterly destroyed, but its carbon-fibre chassis remained intact – Kubica suffered only a light concussion and a sprained ankle.
Three-point seat belts
Invented by Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin in 1959, the three-point seat belt is estimated to have saved at least a million lives and is widely recognised as the most important and successful application of vehicle safety in history. Volvo realised the potential good of its invention and opened up its patent to make the design freely available to any manufacturer.
Until then, seat belts had been rudimentary items at best, usually little more than two-point lap belts that often did more harm than good in a crash. But Bohlin applied his experience in aviation engineering to devise a belt that absorbed forces across the body, but was simple enough for a child to use without assistance.
Run-flat tyres
Open the boot of a modern BMW and lift the carpet. Then scratch your head while looking for the spare tyre, or at least a can of sealant, before realising that it doesn’t need a spare at all. Each car the company makes is supplied with run-flat tyres.
The cost of manufacturing these tyres is such that only luxury brands tend to use them, but that tide is about to turn as the technology becomes more readily available and simpler to implement in the build process. Bridgestone has developed a model that continues to function even after a sidewall puncture, preventing dangerous blowouts and allowing a car to be driven for nearly 100 kilometres with no air at all inside its tyres, with no discernible change in the way it drives.
Electronic stability control
There isn’t space here to go into the technology that makes up electronic stability control (ESC), but its introduction into production cars in 1995 (again, Mercedes was first with the S-Class, followed by BMW and Toyota) is ranked alongside the three-point seat belt as one of the most significant advancements in automobile history.
You won’t know it, but your car is constantly monitoring your steering inputs and comparing them with the direction you’re actually going in. If the systems detect a loss of control, they step in, in a split second, to correct the situation, often without a driver being aware of the intervention, such is its speed. On wet surfaces, snow, ice or even sand, ESC could be the thing that keeps you out of trouble. In the United States, it’s believed these systems save 10,000 lives every year.
Laminated glass
Until 1919, a car’s windscreen and other glazing would have been made from ordinary or toughened glass that still shattered with even a minor stone chip, often causing horrific injuries. But in that year, Henry Ford applied new laminating techniques developed in France, fitting all his cars with glass panels that were effectively two-piece, with cellulose sandwiched between the layers. This invisible glue kept the glass layers together in the event of breakage, preventing dangerous shards from becoming airborne.
Glazing technology has come a long way since then, and a car’s windscreen now serves as a vital part of its structure, adding to rigidity and overall strength. But that lamination is still an essential part of the manufacturing process.
Emergency brake assist
Yet another development introduced by Mercedes-Benz with its S-Class, this time in 1996, emergency brake assist detects that a driver is trying to stop in a hurry by measuring the speed with which the brake pedal is depressed. Systems differ, but in general, when they detect panic braking, they apply the full stopping force – something that Mercedes’s experiments had shown humans hardly ever do in practice.
The result of intervention by these systems has been shown to reduce stopping distances by up to 20 per cent. Mercedes and Volvo have also introduced radar control systems to complement this technology, which automatically slam on the brakes when they detect you’re about to rear-end another car in traffic, too.
motoring@thenational.ae