Every year, about 1,000 deaths take place every day on the road. And as the population of people on our planet increases, more incidents will take place. (“Crumple Zone”) Auto safety has been major developments, since first being investigated on, and one of the most important innovations has been the crumple zone. These zones are the parts of a car that are designed to crumple and deform in a crash. Thus absorbing some of the energy of the crash, preventing it from impacting the passengers on board the vehicle. …show more content…
They were first invented by Bela Barenyi, a Mercedes-Benz engineer, in the 1950s, and are one of the most basic features of safety design. ("Crumple Zones.") Before the invention, early automobile design theories saw the rigid structure of a car as very resistant during an accident as it didn’t allow any deformations, this meant that a crash scenario lead to severe death or injury as all the forces were transferred to the passengers immediately. Barenyi’s design was the result of questioning whether or not a rigid vehicle was a safe vehicle. It was him who thought of the idea that passengers may be safer in a car that was designed to absorb the energy from a crash and keep this energy away from people in the safety cell. (Figure 1) ("How Was the Crumple Zone Developed?")
Physics
When a car crashes, the aim of the crumple zone structure is to crush gradually, that way much of the impact energy is absorbed and kept away from the passengers; this is termed as a “controlled crush.” The idea of a crumple zone is to increase the amount of time it takes for the force to act on the car during a crash. This way the force can act over a longer period of time, reducing the impact when it gets to the area where the passengers are seated. ("Physics in the Crumple