Safety campaigners other than Jackie Stewart

Reading about the safety campaign of the sixties and seventies today, I often gain the impression that Jackie Stewart was fighting almost a lone battle.
But Jackie Stewart's 'Faster' gives the impression that he and Jochen Rindt were joint leaders of the campaign of the time (the opposition being led by Jacky Ickx and Pedro Rodriguez). And Rindt was involved with the safety of the Oesterreichring, wasn't he? And he led the boycott of the Nurburgring and wrote the open letter against tall wings (I imagine their great friend Piers Courage was also involved).
And Graham Hill had already been working towards safer conditions (his widow wrote a letter about this to... Autosport? F1 Magazine?).
Later Francois Cevert was involved as were the Fittipaldi brothers and Niki Lauda and, presumably, many others.

I don't mean that credit should be taken from Jackie Stewart, I'm just wondering why credit doesn't seem to be given to others deserving of it.

You shouldn't forget Joakim Bonnier, who took over as chairman in GPDA after Stirling Moss. Bonnier examined circuits and worked with safety issues before Stewart took over that job. But somehow Bonnier's name seem to disappear in the river of motor racing history that comes from Britain.

Graham Hill, as F1's "elder statesman" was heavily involved in a lot of the GPDA's safety work, but he did adopt a much lower profile than Stewart, who was the public face of the organization. Jochen's attitude was seen by some as rather too combative and - to be honest - could be interpreted as being more concerned about his own safety than anyone else's. He certainly lost the sympathies of a few people ....

The two main players you have missed were Jo Bonnier, who was GPDA President, and "Big Lou" (Louis Stanley of BRM) who was personally responsible for setting up the Grand Prix Medical Unit.

Originally posted by Tomas Karlsson
You shouldn't forget Joakim Bonnier, who took over as chairman in GPDA after Stirling Moss. Bonnier examined circuits and worked with safety issues before Stewart took over that job. But somehow Bonnier's name seem to disappear in the river of motor racing history that comes from Britain.

I didn't forget him Tomas ;)

I think Jo was also content to let the younger guys do the public work, while actually getting on with the "real" work in private.

Somewhere in Prüller's book on Jochen, there's a mention of him going on Austrian or German TV and having to defend his position against inane arguments like "a 100 metre runner doesn't need a fire extinguisher"

Dr Michael Henderson...

Right there working with them on in-car safety... and keeping them 'in car'!

Also, I'd have to say that there was an American influence that came in... whether it was via the Can-Am drivers and teams or the Indy sorties or what I don't know. But I'm sure it had an effect on F1 and other European racing.

Originally posted by Ray Bell
Dr Michael Henderson...

Right there working with them on in-car safety... and keeping them 'in car'!

Beat me to it. Dr Michael Henderson's seminal book "Motor racing in safety" was published back in the late 60's and made fascinating and innovative reading back then. It is surprising how much of it still applies.

Henderson was himself a Clubman's driver so it was written with experience. He went on to help develop multi-point harnesses, hence Ray's comments. Without doubt one of motor sport's greatest unsung heroes.

I think that Niel Allen would cherish the memory of listening to his reasoning...

From memory, he was also involved in creating a vehicle that did weird things to give drivers a chance to prove how on the ball they were.

The relevance? To show that a very small amount of alcohol was indeed enough to make a driver less capable than he thought he was.

There's a Racing Car News article on this... about 1969/70... maybe 1971.

I think Jo was also content to let the younger guys do the public work, while actually getting on with the "real" work in private.

As far as I know it was JoBo who did the public work. At least during the sixties.
But he wasn't so good at working on his own personal image. Stewart showed the safety work to the media, which apart from making himselt known as a safety apostle, also probably helped to make things happen a bit quicker.

Peter Westbury - although his career at the top level was decidedly modest he was involved with the GPDA's safety efforts....

I would have thought that Motor racing safety is a process which dates back to at least the Paris-Madrid race. The Times ran an editorial on the subject in 1903.

Louis Chiron seems to have played a leading role in the establishment of the driver's association in 1957, which had safety as one of it's objectives. Indeed Chiron was reported at the time as stating that one of their first aims would be to see a greater use of straw bales at circuits.....................somewhat poignant I know.