The American motor-vehicle death rate by miles driven peaked in 1921, when it was about 22 times worse than in 2014, the best year on record.
In 1959, that rate was four to five times as bad as in recent years, only beginning its steady plunge in the early 1970s as equipment-safety regulations and stricter impaired-driving enforcement took effect. The selection of car seats in Manny, Moe and Jack's 1959 mail-order catalog gives us a good idea of how times have changed since that era.
Individual states enacted laws requiring some sort of child restraint device in cars during the 1977 through 1985 period, and the NHTSA stepped in during the 1990s to specify federal standards on the subject.
In 1959, though, the idea was to keep children from climbing around in the car, with the added benefit of preventing them from banging into a steel dashboard during a fender-bender. The fake steering wheel and gearshift features were still available on bench-seat-hanger child seats when I was a toddler a decade later, and I recall enjoying them very much in my dad's '67 Ford Custom 500.
Child Car Seats of 1959
