THE INNOVATORS

First production car with driver and passenger airbags

- Gareth Dean

The cars we drive today were influenced by these pioneers

Oldsmobile Toronado 1974

While airbags have been an almost ubiquitous safety feature on cars since the 1990s, their origins can be traced back to American engineer John Hetrick in 1952. In the spring of that year, Hetrick, his wife and his seven-year-old daughter were out for a Sunday drive in their 1948 Chrysler Windsor. Cresting a hill, Hetrick encountered a rock in the road and swerved to avoid it. In the ensuing crash, the car rolled into a ditch and narrowly missed a wooden fence. Hetrick and his wife threw up their hands to keep their daughter from hitting the dashboard. During the ride home, Hetrick kept mentally replaying the incident and wondered whether an object could prevent a vehicle's driver or passenger from striking the inside of the car in an accident.