C. Hunter Sheldon (March 27, 1907 – 2003) was an American neurologist known for advocating for the seat belt, and for other measures to reduce injury rates and severity among motor vehicle accident victims.
In 1946, C. Hunter Shelden opened a neurological practice at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California. In the early 1950s, Shelden made a major contribution to the automotive industry with his idea of retractable seat belts. This came about from his care of the high number of head injuries coming through the emergency room.[1] He investigated the early seat belts with primitive designs that were implicated in these injuries and deaths.
To reduce the high level of injuries Shelden was seeing, he proposed, in late 1955, retractable seat belts, recessed steering wheels, reinforced roofs, roll bars, automatic door locks, and passive restraints such as air bags be made mandatory.[2]
The many dangers of the design flaws in American automobiles with regard to head injury were systematically summarized in 1955 by Dr. C. Hunter Shelden, a California neurosurgeon. 19 Auto manufacturers had not listened to Dr. Straith’s warnings about protruding metal knobs and had continued to add ornamental metal pieces to the dashboard, which Dr. Shelden warned could further increase the risk and severity of head injury. At this point, head and neck injuries were responsible for 70% of the 1.5 million MVC-related deaths in the previous year, and Dr. Shelden estimated that 75% of these fatalities could have been prevented with changes in automobile construction alone.[4]
References
edit- ↑ "HMRI News". Hmri.org. Archived from the original on February 26, 2011. Retrieved 2011-02-02.
- ↑ Shelden, C. Hunter (November 5, 1955). "Prevention, the only cure for head injuries resulting from automobile accidents". Journal of the American Medical Association. 159 (10): 981–6. doi:10.1001/jama.1955.02960270001001. PMID 13263134.
- ↑ "Shelden, C. Hunter". American Academy of Neurological Surgery. March 5, 2019.
- ↑ https://thejns.org/view/journals/j-neurosurg/135/2/article-p594.xml
Category:1907 births Category:2003 deaths Category:American neurologists
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