Putting the high-rise SUV driver barrelling down the high street with little regard for their surroundings to one side for a minute, statistics show that our roads are safer than ever. Since 2003 the number of incidents has fallen by 37 per cent, while the fatality rate has reduced by more than half. But the groundwork to achieve all this started a whole lot longer than 20 years ago – and led to a whole host of acronyms appearing on cars over a period of more than four decades.
The first part of the 20th century is not an era generally associated with safety-conscious motoring, and yet we’d already seen advents like the windscreen wiper (1903), rear view mirror (1911), indicators (1914), and laminated safety glass
