The first crash test in the history of Mercedes-Benz took place on 10 September 1959, when a test car was accelerated head-on towards a stationary obstacle. Safety research at the brand just entered a new era.
1939 was a key year in the history of safety at the Stuttgart brand, for this was the year Daimler-Benz signed up the engineer Béla Barényi. His developments were to prove definitive in terms of passive safety for the modern passenger car. The new inventions included the safety body with rigid passenger cell and front and rear crumple zones (premiered in 1959 in the W 111 series) and the safety steering wheel, which made its debut in 1976 in the 123 series.
The new improvemetns Developed the safety body to production standard in the 1950s, the crumple zones which were designed to absorb the kinetic energy of a crash by controlled deformation. The prevailing view at this time was still that the interests of occupant safety were best served by maximum rigidity of the body.
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Source: Mercedes-Benz