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A historical review covering twenty-six years during which there were twenty-four meetings for field demonstrations and presentation of scientific papers. Twenty volumes of Proceedings were produced, consecutively numbered from Fifth to Twenth-Fifth from 1961 through 1981. The First Meeting was at Holloman Air Force Base on 17 May, 1955 in response to a request by Don Blanchard of the Society of Automotive Engineers for a tour of facilities and Field Demonstrations by the Aeromedical Field Laboratory relating to automotive crash research, for the benefit of the newly organized SAE Committee on Motor Vehicle Seat Belts and invited guests. The evolution of the Stapp Car Crash Conferences in terms of organization and program development is traced. Contributions to automotive safety research resulting from the Car Crash Conferences are discussed.

The lap belt has been evaluated as a safety restraint for occupants of automotive vehicles by exposing anthropometric dummies and human volunteers to experimental crash decelerations. Air Force and Civilian automobile crash statistics provided typical configurations of accidents. Instrumented anthropomorphic dummies in salvage vehicles were used to duplicate selected accidents by collision into barriers, other vehicles, or by snubbing the vehicle with a cable going to an anchored hydraulic snubber. Electronically and optically recorded data from these experiments provided configurations for simulating crashes with human volunteers on a catapult powered sled on rails accelerated into a preset water inertia brake; a pendulum swing seat arrested by a snubbing cable; a seat propelled by a shock-cord catapult into mechanical pinch brakes; and finally, the salvage automobile decelerated by the hydraulic snubber.