Culver City Volvo celebrates 60th anniversary of 3 point seat belt in USA
Culver City Volvo Cars is proud to celebrate 60 years of the 3-point seat belt, which has saved over a million lives.

Introduced by Volvo Cars in 1959, the three-point safety belt is estimated to have saved over one million lives around the world, not just in Volvos but in numerous other cars, thanks to its decision, made by Volvo, to share this amazing invention with the world in the interest of improving traffic safety for everyone. Since then Volvo has continued to prioritize societal progress over financial gain alone.

Nils Bohlin was an engineer at Volvo when he invented the three-point seat belt in 1959. The 1950s were a time when only pilots and racing drivers wore harnesses, but seat belts - when they were fitted in cars - took the form of a very basic two-point waist restraint. In vehicular crashes, sometimes these did more harm than good to the restrained passenger.

The reason the much safer three-point seat belt is so widely in use today is actually because Volvo opened up the patent so that any car manufacturer could use it in their vehicle design. In typical Volvo style, they decided that profit was less important than the life saving significance of this amazing invention.

"The decision to release the three-point seat belt patent was visionary and in line with Volvo's guiding principle of safety." Alan Dessell