We had a station wagon with a rear facing flip up seat in the back of the cargo area. I used to love sitting back there looking at all the drivers behind us. God save us if we were ever rear ended though.

Although the safety features weren’t like todays, the earliest cars I remember didn’t even have seatbelts, but there was also much less cars on the road back then. The serious accidents were still horrific and the chances of survival were nil. Growing up I had a family friend who was a paramedic and when I was old enough I heard some of the stories of the crashes he had been to and those images are still seared into my memory 30+ years later.