Béla Barényi

Béla Barényi (1907-1997) was a Hungarian born engineer widely regarded as the father of passive vehicle safety for his decades of work at Daimler-Benz in Germany. He is credited with originating the crumple zone concept, first sketched in 1937 and patented in refined form in 1952, which divides a car's body into a rigid passenger cell flanked by front and rear sections designed to deform and absorb crash energy rather than transmit it to occupants. The 1959 Mercedes-Benz W111 became the first production car to fully apply his crumple zone patents. He also developed the collapsible steering column and reinforced structures for convertible roofs. Over thirty three years at Daimler-Benz, from 1939 to 1972, he accumulated more than a thousand patents and was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1994.