John Fitch, 1917–2012

John Fitch was a flying ace and record-breaking race-car driver, but he will be remembered for his commitment to safety, not just to speed. The safety barrier he invented, an arrangement of sand-filled barrels, can still be seen on exit ramps across the U.S. As a fighter pilot, he recalled, “I was involved in some fatal events.” The barrier was “payback, in a way.”

Fitch’s “first passion was airplanes, not cars,” said AutoWeek. His stepfather took him as a boy to the Indianapolis Speedway, in his hometown, but he wasn’t impressed. “A bunch of cars going round in a circle,” he said. “What’s the point?” When World War II broke out, Fitch volunteered for the Army Air Corps and distinguished himself by shooting down a Messerschmitt jet fighter in Germany. He later raced yachts in Florida, where he met Noël Coward and the Kennedys and befriended the Duke of Windsor while both men were relieving themselves outside a party. “We had a delightful little chat,” he later said.

Fitch soon “turned his sights to racing,” said the Los Angeles Times. He won the Grand Prix of Argentina in 1951, receiving a kiss from Eva Perón in return, before joining the Mercedes-Benz team and racing alongside Stirling Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio. But his career changed forever in 1955, when the 24-hour endurance race at Le Mans “turned to horror.” Fitch’s co-driver, Pierre Levegh, lost control of his car and ploughed it into the crowd, killing himself and 80 spectators. The disaster “spawned Fitch’s interest in crash safety that preoccupied him for decades.”

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Fitch began experimenting, filling liquor crates with sand and “crashing into them himself at speeds of up to 70 mph,” said The New York Times. The Fitch Inertial Barrier has saved an estimated 17,000 lives, and still saves approximately $400 million a year in “property damage and medical expenses.” It was one of 15 patents that he owned for motor racing and highway driving.

Fitch’s love for speed never faded, said the Fort Wayne, Ind., Journal Gazette, and even in his senior years he kept up his record-breaking ways. He set his final speed record at the age of 70— “for driving backward.”