Barbara Sabey facts for kids

Barbara Ethel Sabey was a brilliant engineer from the United Kingdom. She worked on making roads safer for everyone. Her ideas helped create many of the safety rules and designs we see on roads today. She especially focused on how human mistakes can cause accidents.

Her Education

Barbara Sabey studied physics at university. She earned a special degree called a PhD. Her research was about how car tires grip the road, especially when it's wet. This knowledge was very important for road safety.

Making Roads Safer

For most of her career, Barbara Sabey worked at the Transport Research Laboratory in the United Kingdom. This is a place where scientists and engineers study how to make travel safer. She made huge contributions to road safety engineering. Many of her ideas are now common safety rules. These include rules about how deep tire treads should be. She also helped show why seat belts should be worn by everyone. Her work also influenced how roads are designed.

In the 1960s, she was a top scientist in the section that studied road surfaces. She even gave a tour of the research labs to the Women's Engineering Society.

The Urban Safety Project

In the 1980s, Barbara led a big project called the Urban Safety Project. This project looked at different ways to make cities safer for drivers and pedestrians. Many ideas for slowing down traffic in neighborhoods, like speed bumps, came from this work.

Her earlier research showed something very important. About 95% of all road accidents happen because of human error. This means that mistakes made by people, like not paying attention, are a big cause of crashes. This discovery helped focus safety efforts on understanding and preventing human mistakes.

Awards and Recognition

Barbara Sabey shared her knowledge with many transportation groups. She advised organizations in the United Kingdom and even in New Zealand. She spent a year there helping them with road safety.

Because of her amazing work, she received an honorary doctorate degree from Middlesex University. In 1983, she was given the Imperial Service Order. This is a special award for excellent service to the government. In 1973, she also became the first woman to lead the Civil Service Motoring Association.

Her Personal Life

Barbara Sabey loved competitive driving. She often raced her Mini Cooper car. She even competed in the RAC Rally of Great Britain several times in the late 1960s.

She lived in the Maidenhead area of England for her whole adult life. Barbara Sabey passed away on February 24, 2013.

Her important papers and research notes were given to the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds in 2014.