Volvo Gave Away the Most Important Design They Ever Patented | Hacker News Reader

Volvo Gave Away the Most Important Design They Ever Patented

priceonomics.com

402 pointspisarzp79 comments

Seat belts work. I once spent several minutes held upside down by one, after the car I was riding in rolled onto it's roof. Everything loose in the car ended up on the headliner -- change, jackets, crusty old french fry bits...

BTW: You are almost certainly not strong enough to support yourself by one hand while you unbuckle. But falling down to the roof after the wreck is far better than being thrown from the car during the wreck.

The safety of modern cars is amazing. I was also in a rollover accident, and only had two main complaints immediately following it: my head hurt slightly from falling on it when I unbuckled my seat belt while hanging upside down, and my knee was sore from banging against the dash when the car rolled. This was in a "cheap", "plastic" 2006 Hyundai Accent. However, I don't recommend trying this to find out -- although the driver and I crawled out of the car and were standing there when the police and ambulance arrived, they were shocked that we were basically unharmed (as were the nurses and doctors at the hospital we were taken to for examination).

>This was in a "cheap", "plastic" 2006 Hyundai Accent.

This brings back memories of high school. I was driving a massive boat...a Pontiac Parisian station wagon (thank you grandpa). I was stopped at a light with a car in front of me and a car in back. I saw a truck barreling down in my rearview and knew he wasn't paying attention. I heard the screech of brakes as he slammed the car behind me with enough force to hit me and launch my wagon into the car in front of me...a cheap plastic Hyundai as I recall.

Anyway, the hood of the car behind me was totaled, and the rear of the Hyundai in front of me was demolished. My slab of Detroit steel was untouched. Even the steel bumper was perfect, -both the front and rear had a thin band of rubber running horizontally across. The rear rubber band was slightly deformed for a couple of square inches. That was it. I remember the cop just looking at it shaking his head :) I still think back to that transfer of force and almost can't believe it.

That worked out good for you because you were stationary at the time. If you were moving at highway speed and slammed into something, you would be better off in the Hyundai, where the front end of the car is sacrificed to help cushion the stop a bit. This is, of course, assuming that you hit an object that isn't easily movable, and that the Hyundai's passenger compartment is strong enough to not collapse.

Now if your Detroit Steel smacks into the Hyundai at speed, chances are that it wouldn't come to a dead stop, and the Hyundai would be smacked off the road. In that case, Detroit Steel wins. All depends on the accident.

Very true. I'm just glad I wasn't on my motorcycle. I've been rear-ended three times in my life (car all three times). It doesn't matter how defensively you drive, -you can't eliminate all of the risk from other drivers.

I had a similar "slab of Detroit steel" in the form of a '78 Chevy Impala station wagon. A drunk driver hit me at nearly 50mph while I was sitting still at a light. My car was only slightly damaged and still driveable. I however felt like I'd been nearly cut in half. From this I gleaned that the car was quite durable, but it made no concession whatsoever for my durability. There was likely a conceivable wreck that would result in my death but the car remaining driveable.

You should watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g

That was a nice video demonstrating how the hood of modern cars are designed to crumple upon impact to save the driver.

It could be worse, you know. The car colliding with the modern day Chevy could be European car of that era. Here, see Citroen 2CV (the first car in that queue to be hit) to disappear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR0LRSLCN2I It is like magic, but scary.

After seeing that clip I've been somewhat scared to drive my 2CV around..

Oh, absolutely. "Detroit Steel" is far more sturdy compared to its European brethren of the time, but I think the point is that good engineering is an even better protection than sheer material strength.

Great illustration of the modern safety engineering we read so much about.

I defy anybody not to cringe hard at that first cut of the Bel Air's cabin disintegrating on impact. Scary stuff.

Exactly, the new cars fail gracefully- for the old cars things are much more all, or nothing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumple_zone

Pedestrian accidents and high speed impacts brought about the current crumpling cars. Heavy steel cage for the passengers surrounded by stuff designed to destroy itself in an accident at more than 15 MPH. (In a way that absorbs energy from the impact, protecting everyone involved).

Also note that the lack of crumple zones leads to a lot more movement for anyone in the car as well. And not to mention if the outside crumples the inside is less likely to.

Exactly - if all the vehicles involved in that accident were like the poster's there would have been some serious injuries. You want your car to crumple like a paper plate in an accident - if it doesn't, you will!

Except in Brazil... :(

People crash tested brazillian made cars (of several companies and models) with several other countries tests...

None passed.

My associate, that is French, but bought a locally made european car thinking it would be well built as the european version, got quite disappointed upon seeing the tests results of the model he bought.

as was proved recently, it basically boils down to be hit in the right spot the cars are hardened to pass the safety ratings tests. Maybe not on malice but because the emphasis on those tests, the car engineers focus a lot on those, while ignoring (or saving costs/weight) others.

There's a new batch of safety rating tests that i can't find the link to, that changed the frontal non-centered crash from the original position to some degrees off, and most cars jumped from 5 to 3 stars.

It's called the IIHS small overlap front crash test. Many cars do poorly not for nefarious reasons (and I know you weren't claiming so) simply because it was not really considered before. What happens in many cases is the front wheel detaches and travels up into the passenger compartment, bringing the engine and transmission along as well. Also the A pillar takes a large force, which unlike the intrusion was expected. In many cars that fared well enough even when the front crush box was avoided. What happened is that statisticians at insurance companies noticed an anomaly of accidents causing high medical claims which stood out from other similar speed frontal impacts. To some extent Honda and Volvo in particular already anticipated this more than other manufacturers though.

I totalled my 2009 VW Golf last year when I hit a guard rail doing about 60kph. The front end was completely smashed, but I walked away with only a little whiplash. Amazingly, the angle was such that neither of the front airbag sensors were tripped so it was entirely the seatbelt and crumple zones that saved me.

Agreed. I had a nearly head-on collision at ~40-50mph. Both front airbags deployed and my car (1999 BMW 323i) was totaled, but I have no recollection of even experiencing any pain whatsoever. I just got up and walked away, and went to school for the day (occurred early in the morning on the way to school).

The ultimate survival bias stories.

In Finnish driving schools we are taught to try to put our feet on the car ceiling in a situation like that. It seems pretty difficult, but gravity helps when you're upside down and actually in a need for that trick. That way one can avoid falling on their face after unbuckling.

I've heard that you're supposed to put your feet against the ceiling of the car before unbuckling if you end up in a rolled over car. Has anyone tried that?

I remember as a kid in the 70s I saw a car on its roof with two maybe four people in it, this happened at a beach the car I think went too far to the right on a narrow lane and onto a dune then up a steep part of the dune causing the car to tip over.

The car was a purple 1970s muscle car with rear really wide slicks I think it was an AMC AMX.

I distinctly remember (I was probably about 5 to 7 years-old) the loose change on the inside of the roof I guess as a kid seeing quarters it may as well have been gold bars.

The article is a little disingenuous.

There aren't two options for a patent like this (horde it or give it away freely).

The other option is to out-license the patent to your competitors for a fee, say $5. The other car manufacturers can speak to the additional safety offered, customers can seek those types of cars out (and are likely to pay for the privilege).

Volvo makes money on their invention and customers get the safety they desire.

Everybody wins.

In some industries this is unfeasable, the cost of signing the contracts with a million little players would be too dificult. However, the auto industry is not one of those industries and Volvo definitely could of gone this way. But how many years would it be until someone decided they should squeeze a couple extra hundred million out of their seatbelt patent? I'm glad we'll never have to find out

definitely could of gone

Pet peeve of mine; it's "could have gone".

Or could've gone, which is closer to speech and still correct.

And causes the "of" misspelling.

MPEG LA does this. They make anyone trying to use their algorithms pay and sign a contract.

They don't make anyone do anything. They only offer a bulk buy deal with many of the patent holders. The patent holders are the people who might bring legal action.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/AgreementExpre...

Is that agreeing with me?

They've sent me the contract before, and I was a nobody. You just have to contact them.

> the cost of signing the contracts with a million little players would be too dificult.

Isn't it entirely up to the patent holder how the licensing process works? You could make it as simple (and cheap) as buying software online. So what if some people wouldn't pay? As long as most do, you're fine.

I'm currently reading "The Box" by Marc Levinson off of Bill Gates' summer reading list. There was a very similar patent situation with container crane couplings. One x-factor with the patent decision may have been standards committees. I'm assuming that the seatbelt coupling was standardized as much as possible to make repairs easier. Standards committees (from what I've gleamed from "The Box") avoid endorsing patented technology. Abiding by standards committees can effect the level of government aide the car companies are eligible for, among other things. So the car companies really may have had to chose between adopting a less effective, but standardized, design, or ask Volvo to release the patent.

I'm sure there's someone on HN who's more qualified to speak about this particular case, but there have certainly been times where patent disputes are that black and white.

Depends on the standards committee - for things like 3G telephones you can't legally implement the standard without licensing the patent pool, although license terms have to be 'fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory' [1]. Qualcomm make more money from their patents on 3G technology than they do from producing and selling hardware. Likewise, there are patents on MP3 and h.264

I've heard people joke that the aim of being on a standards committee is to get as much of your protected IP into the standard as possible :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminat...

In the case of the latches that Volvo used on it's three-point safety belts prior to using spools, almost nothing else really fit.

In my opinion, this is the best example of a selfless action that turns itself into positive a valuable marketing. Volvo gave up profiting millions (billions?) for "the sake of mankind" which gave them an image of a company that cares, not only for their customers, but one that cares for everyone.

Well done.

One could argue that the forgone licensing fees were simply a marketing expense. Was their invention of the seat belt well known by the public at any point?

In any case I agree, this is an example that should be followed by many others.

I'm afraid the decision was made because the CEO had a bad car crash experience.

Jonas Salk, the developer of the Polio vaccine who chose not to patent his discovery, is a prime example as well: "When he was asked in a televised interview who owned the patent to the vaccine, Salk replied: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk

So selfless actions done by people with related bad experiences don't count?

Every such move counts as good. I was pointing out that the action was not truly selfless, since the circumstances were such that he started developing towards safety. He might as well be directed towards something bad if the specific situation was different.

The move was correct, but for the wrong reasons.

By your interpretation there are almost certainly no true selfless acts. They're all done for the wrong reason. At this point, we can't know that the release of the patent wouldn't have happened regardless of the personal tragedy so stating that it was for the wrong reason is absurd. It's not like they sat on it for 15 years, then suffered the tragedy, then released the patent.

Unless they also invented time travel, the CEO's actions didn't help with the accident in question, and so don't disqualify it from being "selfless".

What are you talking about? Here is the quote from the article: >>At the time, Volvo was already pushing its brand as a safety conscious automaker. Its CEO, whose relative had recently died in a car crash, decided to hire Nils Bohlin, a man who had previously designed ejector seats for fighter jets, as chief safety engineer (a new position).<<

The increased safety in future car cannot save his already dead relative. So it was selfless, it didn't alter his past, didn't make anything better for him.

So, his experiences let him empathise with others? I'm not sure that's a bad thing if it's the case - seems like one of the more noble motivations someone could have.

An interesting question would be whether or not Volvo would do the same thing today if they made another such invention.

I think the presence of institutions like the IIHS, the safety tests done, and the importance placed on safety by consumers would simply encourage other manufacturers to license the invention. Remember, at the time, manufacturers decided not to include seat belts at all, because they didn't want people to think cars weren't safe. The market is very different, now, and if there were some invention that came along that had as great an impact as the three-point belt I'm sure you would see other manufacturers license or copy it.

You don't have to go far or wonder up scenarios.

Just look at what happens to ANY safety patent, save from this one.

none of them are free. they all carry royalties. Better yet, get away from automobiles and look at medical patents. The most lucrative ones are for disposable cathereres(not sure the word in english). they are sometimes nothing more than a straw and a needle. yet patents abound.

How many lives could them save with each safety or health patent? Should we draw a line that if a patent is useful it should be free? ...that goes directly opposite to the justification of a patent to begin with.

Patents are meant to prevent small independent inventors from being crushed by big group to-market strategy taking their invention and out-competing them because they didn't have to invest the R&D.

Today, there is no R&D on a lot of this crap, the big guys just patent it to crush the smaller guys with the patents instead of taking their ideas.

At least in the former, the information is out there.

> cathereres(not sure the word in english)

'Catheters' is the word in English.

You cant compare Volvo then and Volvo now.

But if the question is- would a young Swedish researcher today consider giving away an important invention that would help the world...I think it could still happen.

The problem is that most researchers are employed. The inventions are thus property of their employer.

Unless they are employed by a university. In Sweden, employees of universities always own the invention even though universities function like companies in most aspects.

But back then, it's not like seat belts were mandatory on autos. Heck, there was probably quite the resistance to wearing them for a decade or two as well.. Volvo had to SELL the idea of a seat belt, it's not like the other companies were falling all over themselves to get this new feature, at least in the beginning.

Volvo is not the only auto manufacturer to do this. I believe that Mercedes and Bosch do this too when their technology can considerably help the safety of the cars on the road.

Does a strap across the shoulder really warrant a patent? Am I just having good hindsight? I guess I need to think about this more, but the more I read about things that are patentable the less I think I believe patents should exist at all.

It's not just the strap across the chest - that existed before with the four and five-point belts used by racers and pilots. It was the addition of the mid-point buckle that let the belt adjust to people of different sizes, plus the inertia reel in the B-pillar that made it acceptable to the consumer, and work as a safety device.

The reel was later idea.

I am rather certain if I was designing an across the shoulder seatbelt without having seen a modern 3-point seat-belt, it would end with the seat belt strangling or decapitating people.

Apple has patented virtual page turning, rubber banding, pinch to zoom, and probably other more frivolous things that I'm not aware of. I think Apple would quickly patent the 3 point seatbelt if they could.

Only Apple? When I worked at IBM, we were encouraged to patent every little thing possible (You get 750$/patent). I dont believe this is an apple problem but more of tech industry problem.. Didn't Google just buy massive amount of Lucent network patents?

There were a lot of clever people working on smart phones and tablets prior to Apple products appearing on the market. How did they all miss these obvious seeming options? Apple do seem to have screamed BAGSY on a few key things, which ones that matter did they not grab and now pay to license?

http://www.theonion.com/articles/chrysler-halts-production-o...

In fact there were seat belts and three point seat belts slightly before, even one patented in the mid fifties in USA. But there was a lot of variation. The early ones did not have reels, but what was the latch like? Do you adjust near the top or near the lap? Are there two buckles or one? In fact Volvo went through three pretty different styles before adopting the more modern sort that spool - the one in the image, the one right after that in the later PVs, 120, and 220 series that had the red levers, and the one in 140 and later Amazons with the hoops. So it was sort of a moot point really. Auto manufacturers would not have much trouble at all to come-up with their own three point belts that were different enough, and really they were all pretty different than those Volvo style front ones, some early Mercedes ones were similar in latch but different in many respects too. What was unique about Volvo was that they had a study to see if they were efficacious and how quickly they adopted them because of the leadership and goals of the company at the time. Their promise that this was an open patent could be seen as part of that.

/edit: full disclosure, happy Volvo owner: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rasUCODYVHc/UHQj2hJsoDI/A...

I haven't looked it up, but the patent probably covers the ratcheting mechanism which allows the belt to adapt to any body size, retract when not in use, and locks upon impact.

A simple fixed (or manually adjustable) 3-point belt would be just as effective, but very impractical because it needs to be adjusted for each driver, and it would always hang and get slammed in the door.

I remember that safety belts on older cars did not have this retractable and locking mechanism you see in cars today. They were fixed - as you also see in the article's photo.

1959?? In Brazil there were no three-point seatbelt on any car until the 90's!

I wonder why, since all our cars were from international big companies (Ford, Volks, Chevrolet...). They were locally produced, as we had a very closed market, but the technology was available for the big companies to introduce them here. Maybe it was cheaper to built the two-point one and as the brazilian customers didn't have to know that a three-point version was even available, no one complained.

A lot of car manufacturers in the U.S. fought safety regulation, when Ralph Nader championed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_nader#Automobile_safety_....

Many didn't introduce the measures out of the kindness of their hearts, sadly.

So this is another case of regulation holding back the free market?

"... a three point seat belt that can be seen in the above image and every car sold today"

I'm confused, the above image is a meme -- was this copied from some other source?

Author here. I originally had a pic of a regular old seat belt, but when I saw the Volvo meme I had to use it. Just fixed that.

Sorry for the confusion!

I refreshed the page, and now there's a shot of a man (presumably Bohlin) wearing a seatbelt above the phrase in question.

I was wondering the same. Or I guess they could be talking about the grill of the car containing a seat-belt-like design?

The Volvos back then did not have that, it was reintroduced later and it reflects on the leather straps and buckles the much older ones had, which originated as a means to hold the engine cover down.

"German patent registrars named it one of the 8 most significant patents of the century - an honor shared with inventors like Thomas Edison."

They shared it rather then stole it from someone else. So sharing the list with Edison is a doubtable honour.

Thank god Apple didn't do it!

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