62 Years Ago, Road Safety Became a Matter of State
This page is translated from the original post "Il y a 62 ans, la sécurité routière devenait une affaire d’État" in French.
- 30/08/2025 7:45
On August 30, 1963, the United States established the first rules to make cars truly safer.
For the first time, a state imposed safety standards on car manufacturers. Before this, cars were designed mainly to go fast and attract with their style, not to protect their occupants in the event of an accident.
This law mandated simple yet vital changes. Cars had to be equipped with seatbelts, their structures reinforced to better absorb impacts, and their braking systems improved. This small piece of legislation laid the groundwork for all the safety innovations we know today.
Safety Becomes a Priority
The effect was immediate. American manufacturers, followed by European and Japanese ones, began to incorporate these standards. Drivers, in turn, gradually understood that mobility also means returning home safely from their journeys. Thus, a road safety culture was born: prevention campaigns, seatbelts buckled, attention on the road… in short, a complete change in habits.
Implicitly, this law paved the way for modern technologies such as airbags, ABS, electronic stability control, and even semi-autonomous driving assistance. Today, every innovation on our roads is aimed at moving cars more intelligently and, above all, more safely.
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So, every time we buckle our seatbelts or admire a car equipped with multiple safety systems, let us remember that it all began on that August 30, 1963. A day when mobility learned that protecting lives was just as important as moving cars.
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