Unmasking Millionaire Superheroes: Nils Bohlin

Dylan Matthews at VOX shows a graph from the WHO that the trend of rising life expectancy has been continuing since 1990:

Life expectancy has been rising fastest in low income countries which have the lowest life expectancy, but average life expectancy has risen significantly everywhere from 1990 to 2012.  On average life expectancy has risen 6 years in the past 22, and in poor countries it rose by nine years.  If life expectancy rose just a little more than two times faster than that, it would rise more than a year per year which means that some people would never die, so life expectancy in poor countries is advancing so fast, it is almost half way to the speed required to reach immortality!

Lots of small advances have contributed to this trend.  For example, Nils Bohlin was an automotive engineer at Volvo who invented the three-point seatbelt which he patented in 1959. They made the design free for public use in 1968 and the US Department of Transportation required it in all American cars.  Nils Bohlin died in 2002, and in its obituary, the New York Times reported that his invention is estimated to save more than 11,000 American motorists each year in the USA alone.   Nils Bohlin’s invention may not have saved a million lives around the world yet, but he is well on his way to becoming a millionaire superhero.