The 1960s was the decade in which the car industry, first in the US and eventually across the whole world, found itself at the center of concerns about safety and the high numbers of deaths and injuries caused by collisions on the road. These concerns were felt and expressed both by consumers and by the legislators who represented them. The car industry was then subject to a huge shift in the public mind, from viewing road safety as solely the responsibility of the driver, to an acknowledgement that the safety of cars and of road systems was a design choice. Subsequently, changes in government policy worldwide became rooted in the assumption that car makers are responsible for providing a high level of safety protection in their products.




