1930s Footage Shows Dated Car Safety Designs

Today, most of us probably hop into our cars and head off without much of a second thought as to how far we’ve come as a society. It wasn’t that long ago that cars were a completely new and novel addition to the roads.

People weren’t used to cars and being on the road. Now, we don’t really give it much thought. We already know all about road safety, car maintenance, etc. When it comes to safety, our cars have also evolved over the years to be safer for both drivers, passengers, and potential pedestrians walking by.

Nowadays, many cars come with sensors that will beep if you get too close to something or someone when backing up. Or, they will have cameras in the back where you can see what is behind you. They are also trying to get more technologically advanced to sense potential dangers that might pop out on the road in front of us.

But our cars didn’t always have these elaborate safety features in place. Back in the days when the automobile was still new, there weren’t any of the advanced safety features that we have today.

But, there was one cool glimpse into the past that showed there were some inventors back in the day that were looking to create a safety feature for potential accidents involving pedestrians. That is how the pedestrian scooper was invented in the 1930s.

Some archival footage from 1939 shows off the interesting concept created to make cars safer as it was designed to prevent injuries to pedestrians who might be hit by a car. Essentially, the British Pathé archival footage shows an invention meant to “scoop up” any pedestrians who are about to get hit by a car.

The designers of the device were quite convinced of its abilities as well since the Sheffield-based engineers themselves were the ones demonstrating how it works in the demonstration video.

Check out the footage from the 1930s invention in the clip below:

What do you think of the pedestrian scooper? Should we bring it back in 2022? Let us know!