Driving through 115 degrees Fahrenheit for a couple of days in the 1950s (without air conditioning)

Air conditioning was a luxury item only found in luxury cars mostly in the 1950s and 1960s. So, when I drove to and from places like Santa Fe, New Mexico with my parents for a church Conference when I was 8 we didn't have air conditioning in our car. So, we used wet rags and a sprayer bottle to not get heat prostration in the heat. We also had canvas water bags hanging from the front grill for emergency water to drink as well as filling the radiator in an emergency if the car boiled over. That's the other thing even if you had air conditioning you had to turn it off ALWAYS going uphill. This is still a good idea today in most cars by the way so you have enough power for safety and so your car doesn't overheat in some situations. But, it is much less of a problem than it once was.

I remember my face getting chapped and having a headache for several days from the heat even when we used water sprayer bottles on our faces and put wet rags on our faces to try to not die or get heat prostration in the heat. Some people drove their cars at night to be a little cooler too especially if their vehicles overheated going up hills and boiled over from the radiators. There wasn't any anti-freeze coolant for radiators then and there were shoe brakes on all cars and trucks which often over heated on big trucks and often semi-truck drivers died when their brakes gave out going downhill especially if their rigs were overloaded.

So, disc brakes that cool easier are a godsend and have saved many lives since they were put on cars and trucks, especially trucks.

Another helpful advancement in cars was radial tires which hold the road better on corners and give much better traction in all types of weather. So, less people skid off of roads of all kinds now that all cars are pretty much on radial tires too.

Though I didn't have radial tires yet on my Camaro I was the only car not to be totaled on the 405 freeway back then when a car suddenly flipped over and went sideways and stopped upside down several cars in front of me. I was the only car with the handling capabilities to screech into the emergency lane at 70 mph without crashing and I just drove by the accident in the center emergency lane while all the cars around me were totaled. But, other cars didn't have the super wide traction tires I had on my muscle car which was a 1968 Camaro then. This would have been in 1969 or 1970 that this happened. Many many people are alive now because of Radial tires on their cars and trucks and the extra traction and safety this gives them.