On March 6, 2007, Béla Barényi, the pioneer in passive safety development, will be admitted to the European Hall of Fame in Geneva. He would have been 100 years old on May 1.

Béla Barényi was the precursor of passive safety in automotive development. His patents, including the rigid passenger cell with crumple zones and the safety steering system, have had a lasting impact on modern automotive design. With over 2,500 patents to his name, Béla Barényi was one of the most creative and most productive automotive developers. The latest evolutionary milestone in a string of epoch-making developments for enhanced automotive safety in the history of Mercedes-Benz is PRO-SAFE™, a comprehensive safety philosophy representing the state of the art.

Barényi, born on March 1, 1907, was interested in cars right from his childhood days. This passion became a career, and later a vocation. As soon as he had completed his studies he started attracting attention with innovations for increased passive safety in automobiles. The idea quickly formed in his mind of dividing the structure of a motor vehicle into sections, so that the energy from a collision would be absorbed, protecting the occupants from the full effects of the impact. In 1937 he applied for a patent for a “motor vehicle with body divided into three parts,” which he then progressively refined over the following years.

In 1939 Barényi joined Daimler-Benz AG, where he was given considerable freedom to pursue his ideas. His first project was a new type of platform frame for the Mercedes-Benz 170 V convertible (model series W 136), providing greater protection for the vehicle occupants in the event of a lateral impact. But it was only many years later that the concept was implemented at series production level, in the W 120 “Ponton,” or three-box body model series, introduced in 1953.

The patent application for a passenger car body structure with rigid passenger compartment and crumple zones was filed in 1951, and the first vehicle constructed according to this patent was the Mercedes-Benz model series W 111 of 1959. In an accident, the front and rear frame structures are deliberately designed to deform and absorb the energy from the collision, leaving the passengers sitting in a strong, rigid cage structure.

The W 111 model series also saw the debut of another major Barényi innovation, subsequently incorporated in all Mercedes-Benz vehicles: the safety steering-wheel. The structure, based on one of the inventor’s very early ideas, is based on an impact plate with a large surface area and a steering column with a plastically deformable element between the impact absorber and the actual steering column. This forestalls the “lance effect” of the steering column projected towards the driver in a frontal collision. This was followed a few years later with the safety steering shaft. The complete safety steering system finally made its debut in the W 123 model series in 1976. Other developments ultimately based on Barényi's work included the recessed windshield wipers in the W 126 model series, and strong roof structures (as in the “Pagoda” car, model series W 113).

Béla Barényi’s contribution to passive safety technology was not limited to practical innovations. He also formulated the technical concepts that still underpin automotive safety engineering today. He initially took up the concepts of “active safety” and “passive safety” as used by Luigi Locati, and extended their scope to include the area of “preventive safety.” Within these general concepts he then addressed specific aspects such as driving safety, psychological safety, external safety and internal safety.

And in 1966, together with Mercedes-Benz development manager Hans Scherenberg, Barényi formulated the distinction between active and passive safety that is still applied today. According to this definition, active safety describes aspects such as driving, psychological and operating safety, i.e. the safe driving behaviors that prevent accidents. The passive safety of a vehicle, subdivided into internal and external safety, denotes measures to protect the vehicle occupants and other road users from the effects of an accident.

Mercedes-Benz is still operating on the basis of Barényi’s theoretical and practical advances. Current solutions combine elements of active and passive safety under the overarching concept of integrated safety, and the PRO-SAFE™ safety philosophy is an outstanding result of this ongoing development and enhancement process.