title: Delegating to the automobile: experimenting with automotive restraints in the 1970s.
abstract: This article explores the attempts in the United States in the 1970s to implement a new paradigm for automobile safety-crashworthiness, the idea that automobile passengers should be protected in the event of a crash. A large number of strategies were proposed, including air bags, seatbelt modifications, mandatory belt-use laws, and ignition interlocks. Many of these did not initially come to fruition, but they did give the automobile safety community a chance to experiment with different ways of distributing responsibilities between automobile occupants, automobile manufacturers, and, to a lesser extent, government agencies. These experiments helped pave the way for the successful implementation of a number of new strategies in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
authors.forename: Jameson M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Wetmore
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000266:history* / Q000517:prevention & control; D001336:Automobiles / Q000266:history*; D033161:Government Regulation / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D011640:Public Policy / Q000266:history*; D012449:Safety / Q000266:history*; D014481:United States