Car restraint laws and the Green Hunk...

The large slab of metal that passed for our family vehicle in the late 60’s was a seventh generation rendition of a Chevy Suburban.  As it was green inside and out, we kids had no recourse but to christen it “the Green Hunk”.  What the G. H. lacked in aesthetic value it more than made up in interior volume, no doubt the selling point for my folks who had needed the space to put eight children in the car at any given time.  Given the number of little bodies strewn throughout the vehicle, it should come as no surprise that there wasn’t exactly a perfect match between the number of children and the number of seatbelts.

 

Not that this particularly mattered.  Public health science hadn’t caught up with the automotive industry yet.  Remember, this was back in the day when smoking was still advertised on television and bans on this sort of advertising were still a few years away.  The public’s sense of the importance of car seat restraints had not yet caught on.

And so it was that we were traveling on U.S. Highway 70 from Mescalero to Tularosa, New Mexico one day.  This particular day as Mom was driving she came upon a reason to stop the aforementioned vehicle in a rather rapid fashion.  Needless to say none of the motley crew in the back seats of the vehicle was strapped in and even if some of the seatbelts had been in use, the kids still would have outnumbered them by a significant margin.  Perhaps the  thought was that if even one child couldn’t be safe, then it wouldn’t be fair for any to enjoy the benefits of a car safety restraint system.  As noted above, this seemed to be the prevailing wisdom of the era. 

At any rate, as the car came to an abrupt stop, my mom yelled out as she reached out her right arm to brace the child sitting next to her in the front seat, “Someone hold the baby!”  As I have thought about this in the ensuing years, the chances of us reacting quick enough to restrain the “baby” were pretty slim.  And all that would have been accomplished in a real crash would have been to have a small child flying out of the car holding on to a baby for dear life instead of said infant flying out on its lonesome.

A lot of progress in the science of car safety has occurred since the heady days of our “manual” restraint system.  The use of seat belts has risen from 11% to 85% in the past 30 years.   Seat belts save thousands of lives each year, and increasing use would save thousands more. Seat belts saved almost 13,000 lives in 2009. If all drivers and passengers had worn seat belts that year, almost 4,000 more people would be alive today.  Changes in public health policy can indeed make a difference.

Luckily, we all somehow survived the antiquated practices of American motoring in the 60’s and 70’s.  One thing that didn’t survive was the Green Hunk; it was traded in for another Suburban that was still painted green and served as the vehicle that I learned to drive, cranking that manual transmission through the sweet “Three on the tree” pattern on the steering column.  And I suppose the only restraint system that was needed was one to hold off the high school girls as I drove in classic “Green Hunk” style to school every day…

 

Dr. K

Comments

[Charles]

I was surprised to see they had seat belts in 1950. And turn signals in 1940! http://zautos.com/evolution-of-auto-safety-infographic/
Who would have know?

[ARB Bull Bars]

Very nice, informative and heart touching post nice to see your post.