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DeHaven designed the three-point seat belt—the first one that held driver and passengers across the lap and chest—and received a patent for it. He invited automakers to a conference to present his findings. He detailed how they could build an instrument panel without sharp edges and showed them how to create a steering column that collapsed on impact. DeHaven’s conference took place in 1953, but it was not until 1967, under the public pressure that Ralph Nader wielded, that automakers implemented the collapsible steering column. Over half a million people died in traffic accidents in the years between. Scientists making their most conservative estimates say that over eighty thousand people have since survived traffic accidents explicitly because of a collapsible steering column. What happened in the fourteen-year gap was not an accident. If you died impaled on a steering column after 1953, when DeHaven laid it all on the table, but before 1967, when carmakers were forced to finally do something about it, you died because it was cheaper and easier to let you die than to help you live.