General Motors’ long history of safety “firsts”

By: Regina Carto, Vice President of Global Product Safety, Systems and Certification, General Motors

At General Motors, safety is woven into everything we do. As Vice President of Global Product Safety, Systems and Certification, it's my job to ensure the vehicles our customers drive are built with integrity, but also to foster the rich culture of safety at GM. I'm also proud to continue a tradition of safety innovation that stretches beyond a century.

From the start, GM has made huge strides in making cars safer for all. Many safety features that are standard in virtually every modern car got their start here, sometimes decades before they became commonplace, or legally mandated.

My team and I carry forward this spirit of innovation into our work every day. This week at GM, we're celebrating Global Safety Week, taking the opportunity to talk about why a commitment to safety in all facets matters. For the occasion, we wanted to highlight historic GM safety innovations we're all enormously proud of.

1912: Electric Self-Starter

Starting a car today isn't something you think much of. In the early days of the automobile, however, it was a different story. Vehicle operators had to physically get the engine turning with a long, heavy crank handle. At best, this was difficult, requiring tons of strength to get the engine started; at worst, it was dangerous.

Legend has it that a motorist was trying to help a woman start her stalled car on the Belle Isle Bridge in Detroit when he was struck by the starting handle and later died of his injuries. The man was a friend of Cadillac founder Henry Leland, who sought a better solution.

Leland tapped inventor Charles Kettering, who developed an electric starting system powered by a battery. On the simple press of a button, an electric starter motor spun the engine into life. The electric self-starter debuted on the 1912 Cadillac and helped the car win the prestigious Dewar Trophy, crowning it "the standard of the world."

1933: Crash Testing

In 1924, General Motors opened the first automotive test facility in the world, the Milford Proving Ground, named for the town of Milford, Michigan, where testing takes place. This compound allowed engineers to take a more scientific approach to automotive development, and within about a decade of Milford's opening, GM engineers pioneered a new field: Crash testing.

Their early tests were crude, and dangerous. Rollover testing involved pushing a vehicle off a ramp and down a hill. Barrier testing required a brave engineer to drive the car towards a wall and get out while it was still moving, before impact. After the vehicles were crashed, engineers simply observed what was in front of them. Eventually, though, they developed remote controls for crash testing vehicles, and more advanced sensors and cameras allowed them to observe what was happening during the impact. With that, engineers started testing more realistic scenarios and using data to make further safety improvements to production vehicles.

Today, we use simulation methods and tools to complete much of our validation work and we still crash actual vehicles to confirm our results. In 2006, we opened the world's first-ever dedicated facility for testing vehicle rollovers at Milford.

We've come a long way from pushing cars down hills, but I am enormously thankful for and amazed by the foresight and bravery of those engineers 90 years ago who started a safety revolution.

1967: Energy-Absorbing Steering Column

An automotive safety engineer looks at a car in a totally unique way, considering what every single component will do in the event of a crash. The steering column - the shaft that connects the steering wheel to the front tires - has long been a challenge for automotive safety, as it's essentially a rod aimed right at the driver.

For 1967, we introduced the world's first energy-absorbing steering column. It was a two-piece design, with a crushable steel-mesh component that could allow the column to retract up to 8.25 inches away from the driver in the event of a crash. It was standard on all our cars that year, and not long after its introduction, many other automakers came up with their own energy-absorbing steering columns.

The energy-absorbing steering column represented such an important step in vehicle safety, the Smithsonian has one in its collection. These days, most automotive steering columns are made up of two pieces connected by a universal joint, which allows for more flexibility in deformation. Today, we also take into account our airbag and seatbelt systems when designing steering columns. It's not just about the safety of one individual component, but the system as a whole.

1967: Child Safety Seats

GM safety engineers must've been busy in 1967 because in addition to the energy-absorbing steering column, they introduced something else that's saved countless lives: the modern child seat. While child seats existed before GM debuted the Child Love Seat, they were more for keeping kids from moving around the vehicle - not protecting them in a crash.

Our Love Seats came in two forms, a rear-facing model for infants that arrived in 1969 with a dedicated harness, and a front-facing booster seat for older children. Available through AC Delco Parts and Accessories, these were among the first popular child safety seats, and while modern child seats may look different, they can all trace their origins to our Love Seats.

Today, we no longer makes our own child-safety seats, but we work closely with manufacturers to ensure their designs are optimized for our vehicles, and vice versa. We also partner with Safe Kids Worldwide to publish the Ultimate Car Seat Guide, which aims to teach parents what car seats to buy for every stage of their child's development, and offers tips on installation and use.

We've also developed computer models of the most popular child seats on the market, so we can more extensively run virtual tests for children of many sizes. As a mother of two, it's work I'm particularly proud of, as are the many parents on GM's global safety team.

1972: Air Cushion Restraint System

In the 1960s, the U.S. government began to take a more serious look at automotive safety, passing the Highway Safety Act in 1966, implementing the first Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) in 1968, and establishing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 1970.

At the time, seatbelt usage in cars was very low. Proposed legislation would mandate the use of a traditional three-point seatbelt or a lap belt and some other sort of restraint. Enter the Air Cushion Restraint System, or ACRS.

ACRS was the first automotive airbag¹ put into production, initially debuting on a limited run of 1973 Chevrolet Impalas, then as an option on a variety of Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac models starting in 1974. It was really a simpler version of what we have today: A series of sensors would detect if there was a crash and inflate two airbags, one for the driver mounted in the steering wheel, and another for passengers mounted under the dashboard.

In production for a few years, ACRS wasn't popular among customers, and the proposed legislation around restraints didn't materialize. It wasn't until the 1998 model year that NHTSA mandated that all U.S. vehicles be equipped with driver and passenger airbags, which in combination with widespread seatbelt use, have prevented injuries and saved lives.

1977: Hybrid III Crash Test Dummy Family

We came a long way in the four decades since intrepid GM engineers first started crash testing cars at Milford in the 1930s. Crash-test dummies first became an important part of automotive safety development in the 1960s, and in 1971 after finding existing models didn't meet our needs, GM developed its first dummy, the Hybrid I. As the name suggests, the Hybrid I combined the best attributes of multiple models.

In 1977, we created the Hybrid III "family" of dummies, which to this day is the industry standard around the globe. The family encompasses a wide spectrum of shapes and sizes, from newborn infants, to 5^th -percentile females all the way up to 95^th-percentile males and even including pregnant mothers. In more recent years, we've also developed virtual crash-test dummies that allow us to observe crash kinematics and better predict performance. Our global teams are running tests across multiple time zones, effectively 24/7.

1996: OnStar

In the days before most Americans had home internet, General Motors birthed the modern connected car. First deployed in 1997 Cadillac models and standard across our lineup by 2001, OnStar was built around an onboard telematics module that connected to a live OnStar Advisor in the event of an airbag deployment. The advisor would then relay relevant information to first responders.

Over time, we added even more features to OnStar including Stolen Vehicle Slowdown and Remote Ignition Block as part of our Stolen Vehicle Assistance offerings, and convenience features like remote vehicle diagnostics, turn-by-turn directions, mobile connectivity, and in-vehicle WiFi hotspots.

I'm always just that little bit more at ease when I, or a loved one, is in an OnStar-equipped vehicle. While we hope that most of our customers never need to talk to an OnStar Advisor in an emergency situation, we're very glad they're standing by, 24/7.

2011: Front Center Side Airbag

Nearly 40 years after the Air Cushion Restraint System, GM continued to innovate with airbags. We observed data that showed a high fatality rate in far-side impact crashes, where the affected occupant is on the opposite side of where the vehicle was hit. In some side-impact and rollover crashes, drivers and passengers could collide with each other, with serious consequences.

The Front Center Side Airbag aims to solve that problem, deploying from the driver's seat and creating a cushion between both front seat passengers. It was something GM developed in partnership with a supplier and debuted with the 2013 Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia, and Buick Enclave.

Today, we include the Front Center Airbag in a variety of models where it's proven effective, and many other automakers have implemented similar solutions in their vehicles.

2016: Rear Seat Reminder

Hot car deaths, where children are mistakenly left behind in a hot vehicle, are unfortunately common, with the National Safety Council reporting an average of 37 fatalities a year. In 2016, we introduced a very simple feature to help combat this reality: Rear Seat Reminder³.

It's a straightforward algorithm that looks at whether the rear doors had been opened before a drive and displays a warning on the gauge cluster display telling the driver to check the rear seats when they turn the vehicle off. We first launched this feature on the 2017 GMC Acadia, and by 2021, it was standard across all of our four-door vehicles.

2019: Buckle to Drive

A big pillar of GM's safety philosophy is changing driver behaviors to support better outcomes. We do our utmost to engineer safe vehicles, but we also know that good habits, like wearing seatbelts, can significantly reduce injuries and fatalities. That's why in 2019, we introduced Buckle to Drive.

Debuting for the 2020 Chevrolet Traverse, Malibu and Colorado and standard in most of our current lineup, Buckle to Drive prevents the driver from shifting out of Park for 20 seconds if their belt, as well as the passenger's if present, is unbuckled. The idea is to create a good habit, so that seatbelt usage becomes automatic - you don't think about it.

My son is an orthopedic surgeon, and he's seen enough car crash victims to know whether they were wearing a seatbelt, based on their injuries. "It makes such a difference," he once told me, which is why we will tirelessly advocate for seatbelt usage.

Not only are we committed to developing new safety technologies, we're committed to making them attainable. For the 2023 model year, GM made five key active safety features³ standard on the vast majority of our vehicles, including automatic emergency braking (AEB), forward collision alert, front pedestrian braking, lane keep assist with lane departure warning, and IntelliBeam auto high-beam control. These features have been shown through independent studies to significantly reduce specific types of crashes and injury severity in the instance of a crash.

In the 114 years since GM released the electric self-starter, technology and regulation has changed dramatically, but what's remained constant is how our commitment to safety drives innovation. I'm proud of our legacy of making vehicles safer for everyone, and our commitment towards innovating towards a future of zero crashes.

¹A NOTE ON CHILD SAFETY: Always use seat belts and the correct child restraint for your child's age and size, even with airbags. Even in vehicles equipped with the Passenger Sensing System, children are safer when properly secured in a rear seat in the appropriate infant, child or booster seat. Never place a rear-facing infant restraint in the front seat of any vehicle equipped with an active frontal airbag. See your vehicle Owner's Manual and child safety seat instructions for more safety information.
²Does not detect people or items. Always check rear seat before exiting.
³Safety or driver assistance features are no substitute for the driver's responsibility to operate the vehicle in a safe manner. The driver should remain attentive to traffic, surroundings, and road conditions at all times. Visibility, weather, and road conditions may affect feature performance. Read the vehicle's owner's manual for more important feature limitations and information.